Walpurgisnacht Eternal
by PenNameSmith
Summary: Finished at last! A tale of Hellsing's missing 30 years, as our heroes are beset by Undead Monsters, Mysterious Conspirators, and, um... Gonzo Journalism? And just what part does the mysterious "Schlanker Mann" have to play in all of this madness?
1. Indirect Introductions

_A very brief note before we begin: This is a story set during the thirty year-long "gap" between the penultimate and final chapters of Hellsing, which seeks to tell some of what happened during that missing time, beginning about two weeks into April of 2010. It functions as a sequel of sorts to my earlier story, "Visiting Hours," but is completely independent, so you needn't have read a word of that story to enjoy this one. That said, happy reading, and if you have any thoughts, good or bad, I'm always listening. _

_

* * *

_

The sky was on fire.

. . . Well, no, actually, it wasn't. But it certainly felt that way; a sweltering, muggy night in the middle of April with the clouds in too low and not a bit of wind to help. A storm was coming, yes, that was certain, but not soon enough to dispel this awful heat.

Which was all to say that Inspector Oliver Mason, he of the precinct-famous Walrus Moustache and Growling Disposition, was not happy in the slightest.

Granted, Inspector Mason was not really the sort to ever be happy, not entirely. He was wide as well as tall, and the amount of space he took up alone was enough to make him an intimidating man, even without the needling eyes and the deep burn scars that lay across his face – scars whose origins he would be happy to lecture about, at length, to any smooth-faced recruit with the patience and the stomach for it, but which he would never, ever tolerate jokes about – but that didn't stop him from piling on a stern and surly mood to go with it.

So no, Mason was certainly not the jolly type, but tonight he was in an even fouler mood than usual, because now when he had been planning to be at home, relaxing and counting off another day toward retirement, he was instead standing out in the street, under the steaming-hot night sky, in front of a run-down and disgusting excuse for a house which contained to fewer than four extremely dead bodies.

He hadn't seen them yet – he was just now making his way through the congested sea of haphazardly-parked squad cars, idle coppers, and yellow tape to make his way inside – but he'd been told the basics, and he felt he knew what to expect.

The only thing that worried him was that word – _extremely_. It wasn't his; some pale-faced officer on his way outside of the building – on his way to vomit profusely, actually – had been the one to call the four victims inside "_extremely dead_," and while Inspector Mason was almost certain that the young officer was exaggerating, he still felt the slightest twinge of unease.

He put this unease aside as he marched up the drive to the little house, pushing his way through officers and drooping yellow police tape alike. The house was, indeed, a wreck, with chipped paint, a weedy yard, and a rotten porch, but other than the freshly broken window there was no sign that anything was amiss indoors. He walked up the steps to the porch, and a young officer standing there greeted him with a curt, respectful look.

"I'm glad you managed to make it here, Inspector," the young officer said, fidgeting.

"I'm not," Mason growled, and reached for the door.

The young officer jumped and motioned for him to stop. "Um, you might want to be careful about that one, sir. Don't go inside too quickly, is what I mean. You might want to take a few breaths before you do; it's a bit, ah, _messy_ in there."

Inspector Mason stopped, took a step back, and straightened himself up to his full height. He turned his head slowly, and glared, quietly, at the young copper, who shrank back almost immediately.

"Messy," Inspector Mason said, quietly.

The young officer took a step back. "Er – "

Mason didn't let him finish. "You must be one of the new lads, son. One of the first things you'll learn here, lad, is that you _never _tell _me _what _messy _is." Mason leaned over and jabbed an enormous finger at the scars running across his face. "I survived London, boy. One of the few who saw the city fall and lived to tell the tale of it. I saw it all, every gory bit of it, and it left its mark on me to remember it all by. I've seen things you wouldn't imagine, lad, so _I _will tell _you_ whether something as paltry as a quadruple homicide is _messy_ or not – is that understood?"

The young officer shivered, and slowly managed a nod. Mason _harrumphed_, straightened back up, and returned to the door.

"Good," he said, and pushed it open.

There was a long moment of silence. Inspector Mason, the man who did not want to be there and who had seen skylines crumble, stood in the cramped doorframe and, without moving or speaking, very quietly considered the inside of a house which was filled with, among other things, the remains of four _extremely _dead people.

Inspector Mason left the door, walked to the end of the porch, and threw up. When he was finished, he wiped his mouth, turned around, and glared at the young officer, who was still standing timidly next to the open doorway.

'That," Inspector Mason conceded with a sickened grumble, "is _messy_."

"Well – yes sir. We tried to warn you, sir," the young copper stammered.

Mason wasn't listening – he was already down the porch steps, gears in his head turning, working on who to call and what to do and trying not to think too hard about just how much work he was going to have to put into finding whatever sick bastard was responsible for _this _horrendous mess. He was distracted, yes, but he was at work.

Which was why he _almost _didn't notice the new car when it arrived.

Mason had almost made it to the edge of the sidewalk and the crooked mass of parked squad cars when something glinted in the night – a black Bentley, pulling quietly to a halt on the other side of the street. Mason frowned; he was certain they'd set up roadblocks at both ends of the road. Just who the hell was this, and how had they managed to get through?

The first of his questions, at least, was answered when the passenger side door of the car opened and a woman stepped out, looking tired and wrapped in a long, practical overcoat. She kept her hair long, and the butt of a smoldering cigarillo protruded from the corner of her mouth, which she flicked it away into the street as she left the car.

As she did so, Mason saw that underneath a pair of round spectacles, a black patch stretched across her face, covering her left eye. He frowned. He didn't know what was going on, but something in his gut said that not a bit of it was good.

The woman approached, and Inspector Mason stomped through to the other side of the parked police cars to meet her. She looked to be in her early forties, he saw, now that she was closer, and carried herself with a sort of reserved sense of purpose – like someone who wielded an enormous amount of power, but who knew, and who had had to learn the hard way, just what that responsibility entailed. She looked up as Mason approached, and he fixed her with a cold, authoritative stare.

"Excuse me, Ma'am," Mason said, evenly. "I don't know how you made it past the roadblocks, but I'm afraid you're going to have to leave. This is a crime scene – we can't have civilians interfering."

The woman met his stare. "Am I to assume you are the one in charge, then?" she asked.

"I am," Mason replied, not budging from where he blocked her path. "Though I don't know what that would mean to you."

She put a hand on his shoulder and brushed past, blithely. "What it means, Inspector, is that your investigation is now _my _investigation, effective immediately. Would you be kind enough to show me where the bodies are, please?"

Mason gaped, and started back from her touch. "Of all the ridiculous . . . ! What on Earth makes you think that I would – "

He never got farther than that, though, as the hulking Inspector was stopped by the sight of the driver's door of the car opening. Another woman stepped out of it, younger, with short, pointed blonde hair. She was dressed in a narrow black suit, with a red vest showing beneath a buttoned black jacket. She exchanged a brief, silent look with the older woman, and then walked across the street, toward the house and its reams of black and yellow police tape.

Mason watched her go, flabbergasted – he expected the other officers to stop her before she even reached the sidewalk, but instead they simply stepped aside, dazed, as though hypnotized by some invisible force. The young woman walked calmly through the crowd of police, stepped up onto the house's porch, and, without a moment's hesitation, pushed her way through the door and let it swing shut behind her.

Mason glowered at the older woman standing beside him. This was beginning to be too much for one night, especially a night when he shouldn't even have been working at all.

"I demand an explanation," he said, his voice on the edge of a shout. "Just _what_ is going on here? And who do you think you are that you think you just have the authority to waltz in here and play at cops and robbers?"

"We operate under orders from the highest authority, Inspector," the woman replied. Even with only one eye to work with, her stare equaled Mason's in intensity. "As for _what _is going on, I am solving your case, or at least my agent is. I would be more grateful if I were you."

"_Solving _the _case_?" Mason spluttered. His hands were shaking, now.

"That's what I said. My agent doesn't like to waste time about this sort of thing. I expect you'll have your murderer brought to justice within the hour, Inspector, though I wouldn't expect it to come to trial if I were you. She doesn't like to leave much behind, either. In the meantime – " She opened the back door of the car and retrieved a stack of paper nearly half an inch thick " – you can keep yourself occupied signing these. You can read through it all if you like, but all they really say is that if you tell anyone about what you've seen here tonight then you'll never see the light of day again. In so many words, at least. You can borrow my pen if you don't have one."

Inspector Mason gaped, helpless. This was not the sort of problem he was used to dealing with. His mouth opened and closed fruitlessly, grasping for words. Finally, he managed to say, in a quiet voice:

"Who the bloody hell _are_ you?"

The woman looked at him with an expression of sympathy. She removed her coat, revealing a plain brown suit underneath, and slung it over her own arm, carefully. Her eye traced across the scars that ravaged his face, and she looked at them with just the slightest hint of remorse showing through her features.

She took a breath. "We are Hellsing, Inspector," she said, after a long pause. "And we are the reason that what happened to London didn't happen to the entire _world_."

Mason felt something in his stomach twist, and he took a step back as he finally realized what it was that had made the woman's eye so cold – London. She'd seen it too.

And she'd seen _more_.

Mason gulped, and reached for the stack of papers he'd been offered. Across the street, the door of the house opened, and the young woman emerged, looking calm and determined. Mason watched as she stepped back into the weedy, unkempt yard and stood there – and he watched as the darkness suddenly warped and swirled around her, and as the woman's arm bent and grew and spiraled into something . . . _else_.

The young woman jumped, nimbly, and the wings made of night flapped. And then she _flew_, rocketing upward suddenly and seeming to graze the low-down clouds before she was gone entirely, carried off by the night air – which was no longer hot but suddenly growing very, very cold.

"My God," Mason said, quietly, reaching for the pen the older woman had offered him but not taking his eyes off the sky for a moment. "My God."

"Not exactly," the woman said, and lit another cigar.

* * *

Somewhere else, a man was suffering from insomnia.

Oh, certainly, somewhere in the city exciting things were happening. Somewhere, a stolen car was being driven at ever-increasing speed by a pale man in a torn suit, serrated jaws still soaking wet with the blood of the family of four he'd taken it from. In the seat beside him, jars full of red shivered and clattered against one another. He held them in place with a protective, bony hand.

. . . And somewhere far above, a girl with wings like shadows and very little patience was closing in at the speed of darkness.

None of this affected the man who could not sleep, however, nor was he even aware of it, locked alone in his basement and pacing nervously as he was. He walked the length of the room, up and down, up and down, treading between cut out newspaper clippings and blurry photographs and barely-legible notes scrawled onto the walls amongst it all, knitting everything together in a tangled, paranoid mess.

The man's name was Eddie Holloway, and he was beginning to suspect he might be insane.

He was a slight man, short and skinny with rectangular glasses perched precariously on the edge of a beaky nose. His hair and clothes were unkempt, and so was the room he walked in.

He paused, mid-pace, and let his eyes drift to the pale light coming from his computer screen. There was writing there, writing which Eddie told himself he was doing for the newspaper, but which he knew he would never dare show to his editor, not if he didn't want the man to think that Eddie had become a raving lunatic.

. . . Which, Eddie thought, there was a good chance he _had_ become, but that was beside the point.

There were stacked folders of notes and clippings next to the computer, as well as far too many empty tea and coffee cups for a man's own good. Post-it notes covered every space that wasn't covered already, filled with half-completed thoughts and wild, distracted ideas. The writing on the computer screen was broken, and haphazard – a first draft only. He'd clean it up before he was finished.

It said:

_If you're reading this, then I'm probably dead_.

. . . Or at least it _had_, until Eddie had decided that was far too melodramatic and cliché, and had changed it. Now, it began:

_None of this would have happened if I hadn't been in London that night. _

_Bear with me – this isn't some sentimentalist sob piece on the Walpurgisnacht attacks. I was as affected as anybody else, mind, and considering that I was there, that I was one of the handful of survivors, I can assure you that every little bit of it is still fresh in my mind, especially with the ten-year anniversary coming up on us soon. But no, this isn't just some bit of patriotic fluff. _

_It's not a conspiracy theory, either – at least, I don't think it is. I've heard all of 'em, too, all the ideas that maybe it wasn't just a splinter group of Neo-Nazi terrorists working out of Brazil with scavenged tech and a lot of luck who blew London Town to smithereens, and I can't tell you whether I think those are true or not, but for now this isn't about that. _

_This isn't about what I've heard, it's about what I _saw_. What I saw while I was trapped in a building on the point of collapse with the city in flames around me and nobody else in sight. I saw a girl. Nothing special, I know, but please, don't stop reading now. I didn't think much of it then, even if she was dressed in a military uniform I didn't recognize in the slightest and even if she was moving in a way that wasn't quite what I'd call human. We'll chalk that up to my light-headedness from all the smoke I was breathing at the time. _

_I know it doesn't sound like much, and I didn't think much of it either, but then I saw her again. _

_Not in person, and not in London, either, but three years after the disaster, three years of memorials and psychologists and support groups later, when I was visiting my mate out in Cheddar. _

_Cheddar. I know, right? What's some backwards, middle-of-nowhere town like Cheddar got to do with the London attacks, you're thinking. Well, I'd have said nothing too, except that my friend, he's a copper. Just joined the force the year I went to see him. And while I was in the station, I saw her again. The very same girl, I'd swear to it a thousand times over, staring me right at the face from a picture on the wall. _

_A framed photograph, one of many, hanging behind the main desk. In memoriam. _

_I asked about the girl, and one of the older officers told me she was the great tragedy of the Cheddar police station: Seras Victoria, the youngest copper they'd had in a decade, gone missing during the Cheddar massacre and presumed KIA without a trace of her body to be found. _

_. . . In 1998. Two years before London. Two years before I'd seen her, alive and well and looking just like her photo. _

_I should have stopped there, I know I should have, but I'm a journalist, so I didn't. I followed the name, I scraped the bottom of every resource I had. And every lead I got, every trace I found, always led to one name, at which point I ran into an extremely dead end. Every time, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get past that name. _

_But with the things I've managed to find out, I know I can't give up. There's more to this than anyone could possibly imagine – not me and certainly not you. So if you're reading this now, it means one of two things – either it's not finished, and my research has met a rather unpleasant end, or it's in print, and the Truth is out at last. _

_If what I've found out is true, then this island is in terrible danger, even more than it was on the night London burned. Whatever it takes, I aim to uncover the truth of the matter. _

_And not even Hellsing will be able to stop me when I do. _


	2. Very Nasty Things of Unclear Origin

Seras Victoria woke up extremely early, which was another way of saying that she woke up at around four in the afternoon.

She hadn't been expecting to. She'd gone to sleep that morning exhausted. Chasing down that vampire's car had been more difficult than she expected it would be, and eventually she'd wound up having to stop it with her own body. Forcefully. That had been somewhat painful, to say the least.

So when she'd finally managed to haul her way back to the basement of Hellsing manor and crawl into coffin at the absurdly late hour of seven AM, she had been expecting to sleep through until early evening at least. But for one reason or another, she found herself awake considerably earlier than that, and knowing from experience that she would never manage to fall asleep again now that she was up, she sighed, pushed the lid off of her coffin, and arose to stalk the late afternoon.

She stood, and stretched, replacing the coffin lid with a careful prod from her foot. It was different from the one she'd originally been given upon her arrival at Hellsing, and she liked it considerably more – a spacious, carved-redwood piece with velvet lining on the inside. The engraving, written in delicate, looping text, was burned neatly into the center of the lid. _Bold Enough To Be The Monster_, it read; she'd heard it in a song, and while Sir Integra had been somewhat reluctant at first to allow such a . . . _contemporary _turn of phrase, she'd relented eventually.

Declining to dress properly for the moment, Seras grabbed a blue bathrobe from a hook in the wall and pulled it over her sleep things: striped pajama pants and a white T-shirt with the words _Say Auf Wiedersehen to your Nazi Balls _stenciled across the front. She yawned, ran a hand through her tousled sleep-hair, then stepped onto the wall and walked through the ceiling, leaving a dark, wispy trail of shadows in the stone behind her.

It was one of the first tricks she'd managed to teach herself after coming into her own as a vampire, and ten years later she still didn't think the novelty had worn off. It was no wonder Alucard had liked to spend his free time wandering around the estate like this. She passed through one floor, and then another and another, emerging into the house's upper levels and finding herself having to step carefully to avoid treading upon the paintings that lined the walls.

She kept going up until she reached the room she wanted – Sir Integra's office, complete with the woman herself seated behind a formidable mound of paperwork strewn across her desk. It being four o'clock, a tea tray was balanced on one corner of the desk as well, and the aging knight held a steaming cup gently in one hand as she perused the latest bit of important work.

Seras shuffled across the checkered floor toward her. "'Evening," she said, sleepily, and Integra looked up, surprised.

"I wasn't expecting you to be awake this early, Seras," Integra said, looking concerned.

"Neither was I." Seras dragged an extra chair from the edge of the room back to the desk and plopped down into it. "I must be sleeping funny or something. Or maybe I just had a weird dream and I don't remember it. I used to get the _craziest_ nightmares right after I died, you know . . . "

The older woman nodded, still seeming attentive to. "Well, as long as you're feeling all right. I can't have you in bad health, Seras. I _can_ offer you a cup of tea, though, if you think it would help your spirits now." She motioned to the steaming teapot resting on the edge of her desk.

Seras considered making the obvious reference, but decided eventually that Integra had probably heard it enough times already and decided against it. "I'm fine," she said. "I'll just get my breakfast out of the freezer in a few hours like I normally do. I know you're concerned about the health of your top weapon, but I highly doubt insomnia will be the end of me."

Integra took another sip from her teacup and then set that down as well. "I'm concerned about you as more than just a weapon, Seras, I hope you realize that. You're my friend as well – and more than that. For the last ten years you've been the only one I know for certain that I can really trust."

Seras smiled. "I know. I've always been grateful to have you for a friend as well. It's an awfully big house without anyone in it to talk to, you know."

Integra smirked back at the girl in front of her. "I'm well aware of that, I assure you. I do mean what I say, though – much as I valued Alucard, the fact still remains that at the heart of things he was an animal, and a barely-restrained one at that. You, though – you're a different case altogether. I wouldn't even have asked you to undergo the Control Art process if the rest of the new Round Table hadn't insisted upon it."

"I know," Seras said, scratching at the sigil-emblazoned glove on her right hand. "And I keep telling you, I don't mind it. Honest."

"Of course you don't," Integra sighed. "And that's exactly the sort of think I'm talking about. You're far too good a person for this sort of business."

Seras rolled her eyes. "You give me too much credit, Sir. I've been through just as bad as you have, and you know it. Though I suppose if you insist I could bring myself to take a holiday and spend the night off."

"Not tonight, I'm afraid," Integra said, her tone becoming serious again. She began flipping through the papers on her desk, looking for something. "There's something rather important that requires our attention. And what would you do with a night off, anyway?"

Seras shrugged. "Spend it watching rubbish vampire movies, I suppose. That or work on my Béla Lugosi impression."

Sir Integra snorted. "It's a good thing I've got something to keep you busy with, then." She found what she was looking for and handed Seras a printed surveillance photograph from out of her paperwork. The image was dark and indistinct, but there was still plenty to see in it.

She handed it over with a grave look. "What do you make of that, then?"

Seras studied the picture for a long moment, eyebrows raised. Eventually, she took a deep breath and handed it back to Integra.

"I suppose," Seras said, carefully and with just the slightest hint of disappointment in her voice, "that I'm going to have to change out of my pajamas for this one."

* * *

Earlier that day, long before Seras had woken up but slightly after something very big and very angry and possessed of far too many teeth had stirred from its cold hiding place at the bottom of the Thames, Eddie Holloway sat in the middle of his basement room and considered, at length, the enormous mess he had gotten himself into.

He was dressed to go outside, and a half-filled knapsack rested at his feet, but the question in his head was whether or not he wanted to risk just what he was planning to do that night, due to what was likely a rather high chance of horrific screaming death.

Then again, he was probably exaggerating the situation in his head, he thought. Then again, he _was _dealing with a terrifying conspiracy, which was the sort of thing that generally resulted in horrific screaming death for people who went and stuck their noses in where they didn't belong.

Then _again_, nobody was forcing him to go and poke the terrifying ancient conspiracy with a stick, now were they? He still had time to turn back – but the flaw with that argument was, of course, that he was a journalist, and scared as he was he certainly wasn't going to turn away from a story like this.

Much as he'd tried to keep to himself, Eddie had known that he would have to confront the situation head-on sooner or later, and to that capacity he'd prepared himself, in a somewhat amateurish manner of speaking. He stood up, and carried his knapsack over to the shelf where he had left his "supplies," while in the back of his mind, lines of his increasingly insane article danced and spun, feverishly.

_Every time I try to find out exactly what "Hellsing" means, I hit a dead end_, the text in his head said. _All I've managed to find out for sure is that it's a state sanctioned organization, and whatever it does involves a lot of fighting and a lot of shooting. And just nailing that down was hard enough, believe you me. _

_But whatever Hellsing does to cover up the official story, they still can't stamp out the rumors. I've been in this business long enough to know that a discreet inquiry will lead to a name, will lead to a meeting, will lead to another name, will lead to a mailing address, will lead to, in this case, news footage of a terrorist attack on a South American hotel from ten years ago, just before the London attacks. _

_Half of my job involves tying together events that don't seem like they would be related to each other in a million years, I think you're starting to realize. But I digress. _

_This tape came at great expense to myself, because it's the only one left in existence. Every single other record of that incident has "mysteriously" disappeared, in one way or another. And do you know why? Because it's not a terrorist attack at all – it's the only existing footage of Hellsing at work. And you'll have to take my word for it, and I know I'll sound crazy for saying it, but after viewing the absolute nightmare on that tape, I can say one more thing for certain:_

_Hellsing isn't human. _

Eddie shivered. Just thinking about that tape made him break into a cold sweat, remembering the blood, the bodies, the chaos and the screaming, and of course, the hideous, terrifying, red-coated nightmare walking down the front steps of the hotel like he was right at home among it all. He gulped, and shoved a handful of sharpened stakes into his bag – they were actually wooden tent stakes, but he did his best not to ruminate on that fact for too long.

_No, Hellsing isn't human. And as absurd, as absolutely absurd and ridiculous and flat out insane as it sounds, I have a fairly strong suspicion of what they might be instead._

Eddie knew the thought was crazy, but he was also superstitious, and he hated taking chances. And if he was going to confront this head-on, then he wanted to do it properly. After the stakes were in, he grabbed a crucifix (a cheap pewter one he'd found in a gift shop), and the can of mace that he had, after considerable trial and error, managed to . . . _modify _to suit his purposes. Once he'd packed that, he added a fair-sized bottle of whiskey as well.

That last was a last-minute decision, and something he had decided to bring as a result of reading Ray Bradbury rather than Bram Stoker. He regretted the waste it would be if he wound up having to use the bottle the way he had planned to, but he was not especially eager to take any chances.

Once he'd done that, Eddie closed the knapsack, sat back down, and went back to worrying extensively over the crazy, enormous, positively _colossal _mess he'd managed to get himself into.

Because the thing was, there was no avoiding it now. Because the thing was, his primary concern of the moment wasn't the Rio de Janeiro tape, nightmarish as it was. It was an e-mail, one he'd received no more than an hour or so ago, from an address he could neither recognize nor trace. There was nothing in it, save for a picture, a map of a particular area of the outskirts of London, and two short sentences:

_They'll be there tonight. So should you be. _

Eddie grimaced. That night, he'd either get his story, or die trying.

* * *

It was raining that night. This was hardly unusual for England, of course, but that didn't mean Seras found it any less unpleasant than she already did. She sat, uneasily, in the driver's seat of Integra's Bentley, drumming her fingers nervously on the steering wheel and watching the rain pound relentlessly against the windshield. Sir Integra sat beside her, chewing nervously on a cigar and staring out at the congregation of tents and trucks and spotlights gathered on the soggy grass field before them.

They were on one of the outskirts of London, near one of the many cookie-cutter housing projects that had sprung up to house the lost and the displaced during the city's long period of reconstruction. The militaristic ensemble they had come to meet was part of Hellsing's somewhat delicate new situation regarding its personal army. As ordered by the state, the organization was no longer allowed to maintain its own armed forces aside from Seras, but somehow that didn't stop the Queen's enforcers from turning a blind eye when certain privately owned military outfits – the re-founded Wild Geese, for instance, or the amateur monster-hunting groups Seras had managed to track down over the years – offered their own services.

All in all, they managed. More or less.

Seras kept staring at the rain, sighed, and reached into the back seat for the pair of umbrellas resting there. She was back in her favorite three-piece suit now; having risen to the position of Hellsing's top monster hunter, Seras had also earned the right to dress however she liked. Usually that meant casual, but whenever she knew serious business was afoot, Seras enjoyed wearing her suit; one of her many private salutes to Sir Integra, though she never would have admitted it outright. She brought the umbrellas into the front of the car, handing one to the older woman across from her.

"Careful of the rain, Sir," Seras said, opening her car door.

"We're British," Integra replied, unfurling her own umbrella and stepping outside. "The only people less careful of it are _ducks_."

They walked, side by side, through the downpour and across the soaked earth toward the sliver of light shining out through the tent flap in front of them. It glimmered through the storm, and along with the light came the sound of voices, serious and practiced.

A moment later, they were through, emerging from out of the rain into a busy, brightly lit hive of soldiers and radios and barked orders, maps spread out of folding tables and very dangerous weapons poking out of crates stacked high in the corners. It was an entirely mobile military headquarters, crammed impressively neatly into the space of a single, large, square tent. A tall, narrow man in captain's gear looked up as the two women entered the tent, and saluted, neatly.

"It's good to see you, Sir," he said to Integra as she closed her umbrella and slung her coat over an empty space on one of the tables. "We've been waiting for you to arrive before we make any decisions on how to proceed."

"I'm sure you have, Captain Gershwin," Integra replied. She held up the photograph she had been sent. "Though I'm still not sure if this is genuine or not. I've been in this business a long time, Captain, and I can assure you that not once have I seen anything like, well, _this_." She motioned vaguely to the nearly impossible image that the picture contained.

Gershwin grimaced. "Oh, it's real all right, Sir. We had a team out earlier, trying to pin down its location, and one of Captain Smith's men came face to face with the thing."

Seras looked up in calculated interest at that comment. "Really?" she asked. "I'd like to speak to him, then, if that's all right."

"Oh, you're welcome to try," Gershwin said, his tone turning darker, "but I'm afraid you'll have to find the other half of him first. Nobody's tried to go looking for it since, and that was almost three hours ago."

"Ah. Well then. Bother." Seras crossed to the other side of the tent as a crowd of soldiers filed outside, ferrying crates of supplies to some other part of the encampment and leaving her and Integra alone with just Gershwin and a handful of soldiers attending to the radio. Seras stared at a picture affixed to one of the cloth walls; it was another copy of the one Sir Integra had shown her. The young vampire studied it, evenly.

"Well, at least we know for sure that it's real, then. But Sir Integra's right, this is _weird_. It doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before. I can't even tell what it _is_."

"It's big, and nasty, and full of teeth," Gershwin said, without humor. "And most likely incredibly hungry as well."

"I can see that," Seras said, not taking her eyes off the picture. "But the point is, this isn't normal. Ever since London fell, we've been dealing with all the vampires who've come crawling out of the confusion, like worms after a storm. It's been difficult, but it's been predictable. This is something new."

"Perhaps this particular worm just took longer to reach the surface," Integra offered.

"Maybe," Seras said. "But last night was unusual too. When I finally caught up with the vampire we were tracking, it turned out he'd brought some jars along with him in car, nearly half a dozen of them, and all filled up with blood."

"He was thinking ahead," Gershwin said. "What's so strange about wanting a snack?"

Seras turned around, finally, to look at Sir Integra and Captain Gershwin. "What's weird about it is that no vampire wants leftover blood when he could have it fresh. I should know. I'll always be more comfortable drinking transfusion blood, of course, but I won't lie – it doesn't taste half as good as when it comes straight from the source."

"Then what do you think he wanted it for?" Integra asked, frowning.

Seras shrugged. "Maybe he really did want it for himself. Or maybe – " She cast a glance to the picture pinned up to the tent wall " – maybe he needed it to _feed_ something _else_."

Nobody spoke. At the back of the tent, the radio hissed and whined, quietly.

Outside, the storm grew worse.

* * *

Eddie Holloway stood huddled in a doorstop, the rain roaring down from the night sky around him, and hugged his coat ever tighter around his shoulders while doing his very best to ignore his own mind as it read through the very long list of reasons why he really ought to turn back and simply go home.

The rain, of course, was near the top of that list, considering that Eddie had somehow managed to forget his umbrella, and that he had always hated rain, quite extensively, on account of just how awfully _wet_ it always was.

There were a good number of other reasons too, of course, but the rain was the most immediate, and as such, the most immediate on his mind. He shivered, and hefted the knapsack resting on his shoulders. Eddie was beginning to grow impatient; granted he hadn't been here for very long, but the storm was eroding his patience _very _quickly, and if he didn't find what he was looking for soon, all the leads in the world wouldn't be able to keep him put.

Eddie stepped out from under the relative protection of the doorstop – and jumped back again almost immediately as something lunged at him from out of the darkness. He screamed.

It was a woman.

Except, of course, it was more than that. She was dressed in a dark suit that had the side effect of letting her blend into the night unsettlingly well, and despite being soaking wet from the rain it didn't make her seem weak or bedraggled, but only seemed to enhance the inhumanly predatory look she carried about herself.

Her hair had gone limp from the rain, but there was no mistaking her regardless. This was _the _woman, from London, and from Cheddar. The dead woman.

She looked at him, and _oh God the eyes_. Eddie desperately, desperately hoped the raw terror on his face wasn't visible while his mind screamed at him, _oh bloody hell what was wrong with her eyes_.

The woman frowned. "What are you doing out here?" she asked, angrily. She grabbed Eddie by the front of his shirt and glared at him, chastising. "Didn't you get the evacuation notice? This area isn't safe."

Eddie stammered, desperately trying to say something, anything in response – his main problem being that his mouth didn't seem to want to work and his mind was still screaming incoherently.

Finally, he managed to say something. "I – I'm sorry, miss, my, ah, I left my wallet behind, you see? So I had to go back for it. I'm, I'm very sorry, I was just leaving now, I'm sorry, if you'll just let me – "

"It's too dangerous for you to leave alone," the woman said, sighing. "I'll escort you to the perimeter myself."

Eddie tried to protest, mind racing all the while. What was going on? Did she know who he was? Or was she just _messing_ with him? Hells, was this _it_? That last thought weighed heavily. Eddie could see his own obituary now, depressingly short and with the cause of death _mysteriously_ unknown. He whimpered, inaudibly, as the woman tried to drag him back out into the rain.

. . . And then stopped herself. Eddie had been about to think that his night couldn't possibly get any worse, when he was suddenly and preemptively proven very, very wrong.

The ground shook. Then again, and then again. Softly, but noticeably. And then, as Eddie watched, something – some _thing_ – came out of the night, through the rain, pacing toward them. Slowly, deliberately, horribly. Viciously.

It looked like nothing Eddie had ever seen before in his life. It was enormous, absurdly enormous, nearly six meters tall from what he could see. It walked on all fours, and ragged claws dug into the soaked earth as it did so. It was bent, and mutated, and ugly, looking less like a real animal than an abstract nightmare with legs.

Legs, and teeth. So many teeth – Eddie couldn't even guess how many, ragged and crooked and very, very, _very _sharp. It opened its mouth wide, and Eddie was almost hypnotized by the sight of so much potential violence in the space of one mouth.

Too terrified even to run, Eddie stood limp as the woman pushed him back into the doorstop, and then stood, unflinchingly, between him and the monster. He saw the monster dig its feet into the ground, preparing to charge, saw the woman reach for something in her suit jacket, something that glinted, metallically – _was that a gun? Was she planning to _fight_ the bloody thing? _– and then she turned, and looked at him, and oh hell it was _those eyes _again – only somehow there was something in them he hadn't noticed before, something very fierce but almost _protective_.

She grit her teeth, and Eddie saw with yet another twist of his guts that her teeth were _sharp_, very, _very_ sharp. "Find something to hang on to," she said, as the monster screamed and began to run. She pulled her gun all the way out of her jacket, leveled it, and turned to face the charging beast.

"The exciting stuff is just about to start."


	3. The One With the Big Gun

It was, in the most sincere and least ironic sense possible, a dark and stormy night.

This was, as could be expected, A Bad Thing.

On a fundamental level, there was nothing really wrong with rainy evenings. The sound of heavy rain on a rooftop could be a comforting one, and there were few better times to take tea beside the fireplace amidst warm blankets and a good book. So no, there was nothing wrong with rainy evenings, not objectively, and in the ideal situation they could be quite pleasant.

In the ideal situation, at least.

Unfortunately, the ideal situation did not involve being _outside _while it was raining, nor did a rampaging, toothy monstrosity the size of a small house figure into the equation anywhere.

Seras Victoria was dealing with both of those problems. Seras Victoria was not in a good mood. Bad things had a tendency to happen when Seras Victoria was not in a good mood.

She was in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, a cheap, naff housing project that had sprung up from London's ashes. Dozens like it ringed the city, little houses all the same and clustered together along narrow, winding streets. She stood in front of one of those houses now, empty like all the others thanks to a _very _swiftly enacted evacuation notice. Which, unfortunately, had been less than entirely successful, or so it seemed.

At her back there was a man, short and skinny and positively terrified, who most certainly was in the wrong place at the worst possible time. He crouched on the house's front doorstep, clutching at a limp knapsack like it was a security blanket.

He stared, transfixed, at what was in front of Seras, which was an enormous, angry, running monster that couldn't possibly be defined properly. It looked a bit like a wolf, but only if a wolf was a six-meter-tall, reptilian _thing_ with green- and black-mottled skin, puffy, wheezing gills, and teeth so long and sharp and crooked that they left the thing's own gums a scarred, bleeding, ragged mess. Its claws weren't much better, brittle-looking and coming out all crooked, so that as the beast charged it did so with an ugly, awkward limp. Some of its skin was diseased, and peeling, as though it had been given grafts and rejected them.

It looked, in short, like a creature that had been _built_, on a genetic level, and rather poorly at that.

A part of Seras' mind took all of this in during the few short seconds before the screaming beast reached her in its charge, but only subconsciously. Most of her head was more concerned with shooting, and quite a lot of it. Her pistol roared, echoing through the rain, and most of the bullets found their mark – but this hardly seemed to bother the monster at all. It kept coming.

Seras took a step back. She managed half a sentence: "Control Art restriction – "

. . . And then it reached her, cutting her words short and sending her flying with a single, violent swing of its snout. The blunt impact lifted Seras off of the ground and sent her flying – straight through the door and into the house beyond. The man she'd found dived out of the way, frantically, just in time, while Seras simply kept going, as the cheap timber of the door exploded into sawdust from her impact.

" . . . Released to level _two_," she finished, painfully hauling herself up from the floor. She'd dented it in landing, and the remains of the door still floated chaotically through the air. She could feel her bones knitting underneath her skin, blood vessels stitching themselves back together, ribs straightening and cheekbones un-fracturing. It all hurt, but she didn't have time to wait for it – she lunged forward, and hauled the man and his knapsack through the door and inside, moments before the beast's crushing jaws shattered the front of the house, leaving it a jagged, broken hole.

The monster peered in at them, considering Seras through its teeth. Beady, glowing eyes stared in at her from the rain outside, and blood – its own blood, though it almost certainly was planning on changing that – dripped down its face and mixed with the rainwater and the debris from the house, dribbling and pooling onto the floor as it stuck its head farther and farther in.

It opened its mouth, and a stench like madness and decay washed into the room. Seras rose to her feet and met the creature's stare.

She spoke to the man huddled on the floor behind her, but her gaze didn't leave the monster for a moment. "When I say run, you run. All right?"

The man looked up. "What? Are you _crazy_? And what _is _that thing?"

Seras shrugged. "Hell if I know. It's probably best to worry about that sort of thing later, after you've been, you know, _running_ for a while."

The man rose unsteadily to his feet. "Run where?"

Outside, the monster beat against the house with its head, causing the walls to shake and the walls to tremble. It screamed again, and clawed at the ground. Seras watched it, gun hand trembling slightly. Her left hand was moving too, but in a slightly different way – it bulged and rippled, and then, suddenly, the seams on its glove split and liquid shadow gushed out of her sleeves and pooled sluggishly about her ankles. She glanced back at the man, who now couldn't seem to decide whether he was more terrified of the monster outside or of her.

"Out the back door would be a good start, I think," Seras said. "After that, just run. I'll catch up to you in a few minutes and take you where its safe – but right now I have to see what I can do about Ugly here, and I really don't think you want to be nearby for that."

The man nodded dumbly and staggered backward, groping for the door in the darkness of the house. Seras watched him disappear, and then, keeping her ear tuned for the sound of the house's back door, she turned her attention back to the very large, very angry, very sharp monster that was sending the house crashing down around her.

The floor shook. The ceiling shattered. Rain from outside poured inside in vast, torrential waves, and through it all, the shadow of the beast came, running, lumbering, screaming. Unstoppable.

Seras steadied herself, and took a flying leap into the jaws of madness.

As she moved, the shadows spilling from her arm came to life, swirling and dancing around her in swooping, arcing cords. They pushed her through the air, swept the tumbling raindrops out of her path, and reached, as one enormous, ragged, dark cloud, for the teeth of the beast.

Seras landed on the monster's tongue with enough force to make it stagger back, abandoning the house as what was left of the building's sorry, pitiful frame crumpled into nothing amid the mud. Her shadow-arm rammed itself against the roof of the thing's mouth, prizing its jaws apart as Seras emptied the rest of her clip into the depths of its throat. It screamed again, a gurgling, gagged sound this time, and Seras screwed up her face as a smell like death and rot washed across her.

Seras jumped back to the ground and shoved her empty pistol back into her suit. This was not going anywhere near as smoothly as she had hoped it might. In front of her, the monster stumbled, and tripped, crashing clumsily to its belly. It didn't stop making noise, however, and as it lay on the soaked ground its roving, bulging eye found Seras and stared at her with furious intensity.

Seras trotted back a few steps, daring to entertain the hope that she'd managed to kill the thing after all. She watched the trembling monster, still alert, her shadows pooling in the air above her to deflect the rain.

A long moment passed.

Then, instead of groaning and succumbing, the monster made a choked, grating sound and began to haul itself back to its feet, placing first one warped palm and then the other against the ground, rising slowly into the night once more. It drooled blood, and it walked as if drunk, but it was still coming, and it knew what it wanted.

Seras swore.

No, this most certainly was _not_ how she had hoped things would go.

* * *

Eddie Holloway managed to make it out the back door of the house just before it collapsed, in a storm of broken timber and rain. From the other side he could hear the screaming of the beast, and the sound of gunshots ringing out incessantly. He wanted to cover his ears and hide, but he was still using both hands to hold his knapsack, and he knew that he needed to run.

Eddie swung the knapsack back over his shoulders and ran across the length of the house's cramped back yard. There was a low fence surrounding it, which Eddie vaulted over, clumsily. That put him out in the side yard of another house. He darted through it as quickly as he could, dodging lawn ornaments and an inconveniently placed birdbath. Another few desperate seconds later, and he was out on the street again, facing another row of dark, identical little houses.

From somewhere beyond the street Eddie was standing in, a light was shining. It looked to be about four blocks away, but it was the only hint of illumination in the entire neighborhood, and Eddie struck out for it desperately.

Behind him, he could hear the screech of the beast. He was already breathing heavily, but the sound was enough to make him put on an extra burst of speed all the same. As he ran, lines ran through his head – an unbidden, mental first draft of what he would write when he made it through all of this.

_If _he made it through all of this.

_Well, I've gone and done it now. Went and found the stinking, diseased heart of this whole mess all in one fell go. You know how it is, how they say you can spend all week looking for a lead and then suddenly the entire story – or rather, a monstrous young lady and the hideous giant beastie she's hunting – drops right into your lap. _

_Or something to that effect. _

_I wish I could say she was exactly the same as I remember her, but the only time I saw her face clearly was in her picture – and that was before, well, I don't know. Whatever it was made her into _this_. Her face is the same – but then I see her _eyes_, and there's something else there. Something else that I think is – _

There was a noise from the sky above. Eddie froze. He was halfway through another house's yard, trying to cut through the neighborhood and reach the light in the quickest way possible. But something was out there – he could hear it just above, slicing through the rain. He couldn't tell if was moving along the roofs or actually flying – though if it was the latter then it was bigger than any bird Eddie could think of.

Slowly, desperately, Eddie inched his hand toward the knapsack on his back, where the tent stakes he'd brought along with him were. His fingers trembled.

Suddenly, it descended, far too quickly for Eddie to react. Darkness swooped out of the sky and grabbed him by the arm –

. . . And Eddie found himself staring into the face of the woman once more. The dark wings she had flown in upon folded back, and melted into the shape of her left hand, poking innocently from out of the violently torn sleeve of her suit. The hand was delicate, but, Eddie thought, like her face it was only a mask for something else. Human as it was in shape, the woman's hand was still as deep and dark as an ocean of black ink.

Eddie stammered, startled by the woman's sudden appearance. She, in response, kept her grip on his arm and began to drag him impatiently in the direction of the same light he'd been trying to run to before.

"Hurry up," she said, sounding worried and out of breath. "It's not gonna be long before he catches up, and I want you out of harm's way before I go back to deal with it."

Eddie boggled. "You're going _back_?"

She grinned at him. "That's my job. Now hurry up. We've got to get you someplace dry, and I've got to trade out for a bigger gun."

They ran, she dragging Eddie through the rain at what seemed to him like impossible speeds – though they were hampered somewhat by the awkward, clumsy jumps Eddie had to make over every fence they came across, which the woman herself hurdled with supernatural ease. They crossed through one block, and then two, and it seemed to Eddie that the rain might even be letting up a little bit. It wasn't much comfort in a world where he was already soaked to the bone and there was a giant angry monster somewhere behind him, but at this point Eddie was prepared to take what he could get.

He glanced at the girl who pulled him along – she was staring straight ahead, all of her attention focused on reaching the light ahead – and regarded her, curiously.

_Ask the important questions, mate, _the journalist part of his brain said. _Questions such as: Why is a top-secret organization that staffs merciless slaughtering monsters taking the time to escort one insignificant civilian? Is it because they care about his safety? _

_Or is it because they haven't yet decided how to make certain he keeps his mouth shut? _

Before Eddie had time to consider that, the girl in the suit pulled him out through a narrow side yard – and just like that he was struck in the face by the blinding light of what looked to be some sort of military encampment. They were in a round cul-de-sac of houses, with a cluster of large, brightly-lit military tents set up in a round lawn area in the center. Armored trucks surrounded them, parked on the surrounding street that connected the houses together. Small groups of armored soldiers milled about in the rain, going about one job or another.

They all looked up when they saw the woman. One of them said something to her as they approached, but Eddie couldn't hear him over the sound of the rain.

"I'm need to speak to Captain Gershwin and Sir Integra," the girl said in response. "And somebody go find the guys in charge of transporting artillery. I'm going to need something out of that truck in another moment."

The soldier she had spoken to pointed out one of the tents and then ran off.

Eddie watched him go, and then winced as light suddenly washed over him – they were inside, through one of the tent flaps. He could make out maps pinned to the walls, and somewhere in the back a radio was making noise as soldiers tended to it. A folding table, covered in documentation and photographs, was set up in the middle of the tent.

Behind the table, there was a man who seemed to fit the bill for the "Captain Gershwin" the girl had mentioned . . . and standing next to him was the most frightening woman Eddie had ever seen in his life.

He whimpered, quietly, and hoped nobody could hear it.

Now that they were inside, the girl let go of Eddie's arm, finally, and it took all the shivering strength he had left not to crumple to the ground in a soggy heap. He watched, dazed, as the girl walked quickly to the table and spoke, hurriedly, to Captain Gershwin and the woman with the eye patch.

"I found him a few blocks from here," she said, indicating Eddie. "Said he came back to find his wallet. We ran into the target just after that."

The older woman cast her eye toward Eddie, and he shrank back a little.

"Is he hurt?"

The girl shook her head. "No, Sir. He's fine, just wet. Give him some tea and a blanket and the stuff he needs to sign and it should be all right."

"Good. And the target?"

The girl looked down and ran a hand through her hair, nervously. "It's hurt, but still active. Coming this way, probably. Oh, and it's bigger than you said it would be."

"Lovely," the man who seemed to be Gershwin said, sounding impatient. "And what, exactly, do you plan on doing about it? I should hope our camp being trampled underfoot isn't part of your master plan to bring this beastie down."

"Not if I can help it," the girl said. She pulled her empty pistol out and tossed it on the table. "This certainly isn't going to cut it, though. I'm switching to the big gun."

Captain Gershwin rolled his eyes. "I'll have one of the men fetch a BAERLKS rifle for you, then. Try not to _break _it this time. Those things cost money, you know."

The girl shook her head. "That won't be enough. I mean the _really _big gun. I already told them to bring the truck around. Oh – " she glanced toward the woman with the eye patch as she left the tent. "I unlocked to level two, Sir, when the target showed up."

"Whatever it takes, Seras," the woman said, calmly producing a slim cigarillo. "I want that thing turned to dust within the hour."

The girl saluted, cheerfully, and then dashed back out into the rain. Eddie watched her go, and then turned back to the company he'd been left with in the tent, shivering. Presumed Captain Gershwin turned his attention to the waterlogged journalist for the first time, a weary expression on his face.

"You'd best make yourself comfortable lad. I can offer you earplugs, if you'd like."

"E-Earplugs?" Eddie asked, confused.

Gershwin nodded. "You'll need them, the way she's going to be shooting in a minute or two."

Eddie hesitated, unsure of himself, and then brushed the tent flap aside, peering back outside. On the street beyond, he could see a new truck that had driven up, with about half a dozens soldiers pulling a long, narrow crate out of the back. He could see the girl – _Seras_, he corrected himself, as he ought to have been thinking of her from the moment he recognized her from her photograph – as she approached them, and helped them heave the lid off of the enormous box.

He nearly fell over backwards when he saw her take out what was inside.

_That's impossible! _His head screamed. _It's bigger than _she _is! How can she even _lift _it?_

And for once, Eddie couldn't really argue with the less rational parts of his mind. What Seras was holding was most certainly a gun, he could tell that even from the removed distance he stood at . . . but as far as guns went, this one was, well, it was positively _absurd_, was what it was.

Eddie turned back to the inside of the tent. Gershwin looked at his face and sighed.

"Told you," the Captain said. "I'll get the earplugs."

* * *

Seras hefted the weight of the massive gun easily in one hand as she reached for the lunch pail-sized box of shells that went with it. Much as she tried to ignore it, there was a sort of familiarity that went with this particular weapon, a nostalgic little tingle that made it impossible for her not to think of all the very . . . _decisive _outings she'd had with it over the years.

Seras never liked the Harkonnen all that much, but there was no arguing that it got the job done.

Seras slung the cannon's strap over her shoulder and gave a light, two-fingered salute to the soldiers who had helped her unload the massively unwieldy thing. "Back in a tic, everybody," she said, smiling. "This shouldn't take very long now."

Not wasting any more time, she darted across the street and jumped, a few powerful flaps from her shadow-wings carrying her as high as the nearest roof. She lit upon it lightly, and scanned the neighborhood streets from her new vantage point, red gaze piercing through the storm.

It didn't take long. The monster was more or less where she had left it, slowly but steadily plowing through another row of houses as trudged toward Hellsing's encampment. Keeping it in her sight, Seras ran to the edge of the roof and made another jump, drawing ever closer to the beast. Around her, the rain grew lighter as the storm gradually thinned – but as she drew closer to her quarry that only meant that Seras could see the monster in all its terrifying _wrong_-ness that much clearer.

It wasn't that the beast was so monstrous, Seras thought, as she crept closer to it, moving smoothly across the rooftops and ducking every now and then to avoid the chunks of wood and rubble that came soaring her way every time the thing swung its infuriated jaws. It was how _artificial_ it was, some sort of bestial Frankenstein's monster. The stitched-together ragdoll of who-knew-_what _sort of madman.

Seras did her best not to focus of the implications of that one.

She reached the edge of the roof nearest to the monster. She opened the Harkonnen's breach and reached for one of it's ridiculously oversized shells, tossing it lightly in one hand as she called out to the monster.

"Oi! Up here, you manky rotter!" She screamed.

It did the trick. The monster halted its steady demolition, and turned to look down the street at the rooftop where Seras stood, waiting. Its eyes, puffy and swollen now with the blood that had seeped into them, narrowed as it drew its rotting, patchwork lips back in an ugly, deafening snarl. It clawed at the ground, and opened its bloodied mouth in et another garbled, ugly scream as it began to lumber, infuriated, toward the draculina's perch.

Seras rammed the shell into the Harkonnen and then snapped the cannon's barrel shut with an immensely satisfying _ker-chunk_. "All right then," she muttered, to herself, as the open, angry jaws of the beast charged closer and closer. "Once more unto the breach, then. Or something equally naff and over-quoted, at least."

The monster jumped. Seras steadied her aim, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

Eddie sat, as discreetly as possible, in one corner of the tent with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and water dripping off of his nose, miserably. His knapsack was at his feet, soggy but intact, shoved protectively beneath his seat. Captain Gershwin had gone, but the woman with the eye patch was still there, and Eddie saw with increasing trepidation that she was now approaching him. He pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and sank as far back in the chair as he could.

The woman regarded Eddie with an unreadable expression, and then offered him the hand that wasn't holding a softly smoldering cigarillo. He looked at it, confused for a moment, and then shook it, gingerly.

"Sir Integral Hellsing," the woman said to Eddie's blank face, by way of introduction. "I am the director of this organization."

"Ah . . . organization?" Eddie asked, nervously.

The Hellsing woman nodded. "State-backed. We do our part to keep this island clean of any monstrous or supernatural threats that might do its citizens harm. Vampires are our specialty, but as I'm sure you've already noticed we are willing to make exceptions on occasion."

Eddie could feel his heart beating at an incredible rate. This was it – he was staring right into the center of it all. This was his story, worth it or not, but one false move and he was finished.

He gulped, and did his best to sound as innocent as possible. "The . . . the _girl_ . . . "

Sir Hellsing smirked. "My top agent. Humans make such terrible monster hunters, you understand. They're flimsy. Breakable. And I've seen firsthand the horrors that happen when you forget to value just how delicate they really are."

"So – "

"So, our business is in fighting fire with fire. The best way to kill a monster is with a _better_ monster."

Eddie blanched.

Sir Hellsing rolled her eye. "Oh, she won't _bite_. Not _you_, anyway. Now, I do hope you'll be all right on your own here for a little while. I've got an organization to run, you realize, and you've got _this _to sign." She grabbed a thick stack of forms from off of the table and plopped them in Eddie's lap. He stared at them with a confused look.

"Security measures," Sir Hellsing said. "We can't have you just wandering around telling anybody you want about this, now, can we? Oh, and you can borrow my pen, if you like."

Eddie shook his head. "No. Um, I mean, that is, no thank you. Ah, I mean, what I mean is, I've got my own pen, you see, Ma'am. Um. Sir."

"Very well, then." Sir Hellsing turned away, chomped down on her cigar, and then brushed out of the tent, leaving Eddie alone again and shivering more than before. He glanced at the papers on his lap, flipped through them idly, and then set them down, carefully, on the ground beside his chair. Very, very carefully, making sure that the handful of soldiers still maintaining the radio on the other side of the tent didn't see him, Eddie peeked into the breast pocket of his shirt.

The digital voice recorder he'd slipped in there before he left the house was still there, with its little red "recording" light shining just as brightly as before.

Eddie breathed a determined sigh of relief, and then reached into his knapsack for his pen. He'd bought it almost two years ago, out of a novelty catalogue that sold ridiculous, overpriced spy gadgets. At the time, he'd regretted it almost immediately, but now, sitting where he was, Eddie decided it was the best sixty quid he'd ever wasted.

Still being careful to avoid the soldiers' attentions, Eddie pointed the tip of the pen all across the tent – to the maps and surveillance photographs pinned to the walls, to the table piled high with documents, to the overflowing crates of weapons in the corner. Evenly, steadily, he clicked the end of the pen with his thumb, and each time a tiny, complicated shutter mechanism bound tight in the guts of the pen clicked and whirred and committed yet another image to digital film.

Over and over he clicked the pen, taking photographs, the forms he had been given forgotten on the ground beside him. As the rain continued to fall outside, Eddie, head completely clear and professional for the first time that evening, slowly and carefully captured the details of the very heart of Hellsing.

Somewhere outside, a deafening gunshot rang out, followed by a piercing scream. Eddie ignored it, and clicked his pen again. Click.

Click.

_Click._


	4. A Brief Tour of London's Guts

It was dark underground, but it was not pitch-black. Not all of it, anyway.

Somewhere, down in the labyrinthine, twisting passages, where the ruined stone danced across the walls and the metal highways stretched on into oblivion between the sky and the depths of the Earth, there was a light. And that was not a word to be used lightly, either – this was no flickering spark, no lonely torchlight, no dirty, dying bulb.

The light was blinding. It glared off the polished tiles on the walls and bounced down the tunnels and lit the entire room with a painful harshness. It came from flood lamps, from medical lights, from shelves full of switched-on torches, from nightlights and ceiling lights and desk lamps and sun lamps and at least one glow-in-the-dark watch that was permanently stuck at four-thirty. The ones that didn't need batteries were connected to thick, trailing power lines, that curled and wound their way around rotting wooden crates and halfway-unpacked laboratory materials, twisting and snaking their way down to the generator, moved there in pieces, that squatted and rumbled down in the pit atop the long-forgotten tracks.

At one end of the room, at a makeshift desk made from part of the concrete cave-in sealing off what had once been an escalator to the surface, mismatched eyes watched a filthy, cracked computer screen that was filled with a tangled forest of data.

Currently, none of the numbers were saying good things.

The owner of the eyes, who was short, and had many scars, and a good deal of skin that wasn't originally his own, stood from his cinderblock chair, pulled at the piebald, scarred scalp that held what was left of his hair, and began to softly make very distressed noises.

"_Ach_," he said, in a reedy voice. "_Ach. Ach. Mist. Fluch! _This ist bad, very bad."

Another voice rang out, echoing across the forgotten, derelict room. "_Drei_," it said, calm and peaceful in the ruined stillness. "Vhy are you distressed so, _Drei?_ Hast zer vorld come to an end too early und proved us to be vasting our time?"

"_Ach_," the little man said, again, glancing nervously between the computer screen and where the voice had come from – a tangled, jagged chair improvised from unpacked crates and broken lab equipment; a twisted throne. The light in the room was so bright that it made the man sitting in it nothing more than an indistinct silhouette, though his form stood out all the same. He was just as tall and skinny as the small man was short, and dressed in ragged, worn-out clothing.

In his arms, he held something that was small, limp, and torn.

The little man wrung his hands. "_N-Nein, Ein_. The – the vorld ist fine."

The shadow in the chair laughed, hoarsely. "_Ein Witz, Drei. _I kid. Do not vorry so." His head jerked, violently for a moment, and then just as quickly he regained his composure, calmly stroking the rotting thing he held in his hands. "_Herr Teddybär _thought ist vhas funny. You must loosen up some, _Drei, ja?_

The little man fidgeted even further. "But, it – it is the beast, _Ein_. _Meine Schaffung. Meine Kind! _It is suffering, _Ein_. It is dying. She vhill kill it. I know this."

The shadow's head turned. "I do not understand, _Drei. _Such vhas meant to be its purpose, _ja_? _Die Pestratte. _A necessary sacrifice for our cause. _Nicht ist das wahr?_"

"But – but – this ist too soon!" the little man whined. "It should be sleeping! It should be vith the others, _seine Geschwister. _But the _Dummkopf _you sent vhas not able to feed it properly. It ist awake. Und _she_ ist killing it. It vhill die. Ve vhill be ruined. Your dreams, _gebrochen_. Ist that vhat you vant, _Ein?_"

"_Nein_," the shadow in the chair said, firmly, clutching at the old toy bear he held with skinny, spindly fingers. "Please. Do not vorry. _Es ist gut_." Another sharp, involuntary twist of his head. "The beast vhill fall, _Drei_. So too shall _Großbritannien. _Only haff patience."

"_Es ist gut, Drei. Es ist gut_."

* * *

Somewhere above, Seras Victoria stood in the rain and did battle with a monster.

She had considered the situation, and after a mild amount of thought, had decided that about the only thing going her way at the moment was the fact that the rain was starting to let up. Otherwise, there wasn't a whole lot to be glad about, or at least nothing that she could see from her position on the roof.

Then again, the absurdly huge gun she carried did give her some amount of comfort.

The beast, that huge, tangled mess of genetics gone wrong, screamed and tore through the street, charging blindly and furiously. When it reached Seras, it jumped, terrible jaws wide and awful, crooked claws extended, blood mixed with spittle frothing from its mouth and its horrible, swollen tongue lolling limp out of its torn, mottled jaw.

Seras shot the beast, once, with the Harkonnen, and it exploded.

. . . That being the simple way of explaining it, of course. What really happened was slightly more complicated and began with Seras pulling the trigger and letting that single artillery shell fly from the roaring mouth of her gun. The moment she did so, she scrambled to remove herself from her rooftop perch – the weight of the Harkonnen not exactly helping matters – and a good thing, too, considering the bloodied, toothy mass that was still careening through the air toward her.

The shell had connected, of course, and done so messily and forcefully. Not quite enough to stop it in its path, but enough so that the soaring body of the monster only dented the walls of the house it crashed against instead of flattening the place entirely. The creature had time to scream, horribly, for one split second as the shell drove itself into the thing's jaws, and then there was a fire in its mouth, followed by a wet, messy explosion of blood and bone and skin that fountained out into the rain and fell just as quickly.

Seras landed on the street at what she felt was a safe distance, letting the weight of the Harkonnen cannon drop to the ground beside her with a clumsy metallic _thud_. The body of the beast – bloodied, limp, and now missing most of its head and neck – was draped against the side of the building she had been standing on only moments ago. As the last of the rain fell, Seras watched as the massive corpse slid down from the side of the house and landed in the street with enough force to make the ground shake.

The body lay still, and did not move.

The storm over in more ways than one, Seras breathed a short sigh of relief, and approached the body, cautiously. She worried, briefly, about how they were going to move a corpse like that, but her fears were allayed just a few seconds later as the body dried and suddenly bent in on itself, cracking and crumbling into dry dust. What didn't stick to the wet ground was swept up by the wind, bending through the air in gritty waves and twists. Seras produced a handkerchief from the breast pocket of her jacket and held it over her mouth as she walked through the airborne dust cloud toward what was left of the beast.

If it had turned to dust this quickly, that meant it was undead – a notion that Seras didn't like one bit. She looked down at the monster's atomized frame with unease as the vampiric light faded from her eyes and the shadows spilling from her hand slowly melted back into a solid, defined shape.

"Bloody great zombie monsters," Seras muttered through her handkerchief. "This is _not_ shaping up to be one of my best weeks."

Something in the waterlogged pile of dust caught her eye. Seras bent to pick it up – and emerged with a burnt-black square of metal and plastic, thick wires trailing out of each edge like flaccid tentacles. It was damaged beyond identification, but even still there was no mistaking what it was.

Seras frowned, and closed her hand around the burnt chip. She turned back to retrieve the abandoned Harkonnen, and to make her way back to camp.

Above her, the beast's dust and ashes spun into the sky and vanished on the wind.

* * *

Integra Hellsing dropped what was left of her cigar into a puddle at her feet, where it sizzled and died, quietly.

In front of her, a hundred armed soldiers stood, sat, and crouched behind a blockade of military trucks, their guns aimed out into the night. Beside her, Captain Gershwin stood, tense, staring out past the guns with a nervous intensity. Nobody spoke – the only sounds were the trembling, metallic sounds of rifles in frightened hands and the last of the rain dripping off of the house's roofs.

Suddenly, something emerged from between two houses. There was an audible intake of breath from the assembled forces. The shape came closer.

It was a girl, soaking wet, wearing a suit and casually hauling an unimaginably huge gun across her shoulders. All of the guns relaxed.

Captain Gershwin breathed a sigh of relief and waved his hand in a signaling motion.

"Stand down!" he called, as the soldiers lowered their guns and moved back. "Let her through!"

Seras waded through the soldiers and the tightly-knit trucks, stopping for a moment to toss the Harkonnen into the back of a transport vehicle. It made a very loud noise as she did so, and the truck sank visibly under its weight. Integra watched Captain Gershwin wince at the sight of Seras treating the weapon so casually, and silently noted her thanks for the fact that that part of Hellsing's budget, at least, was no longer her concern.

Seras approached Integra and Gershwin, casting an incredulous look at the assembled soldiers.

"Don't you think this is a bit much for a greeting party, Sir?" she asked.

"I wasn't going to take any chances," Integra replied. "If that monster had made it past you in whatever way then it would have threatened this entire camp. We had to be prepared to silence it ourselves, if need be." She raised a pointed eyebrow at Seras. "You _did_ manage to silence it yourself, I assume."

Seras nodded. "Yes, sir. It's deader than dead. In fact, it might even be considerably more dead than you might have liked."

"What is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"I'll explain once we're inside," Seras said, moving toward the tents. Behind her, the soldiers abandoned their weapons and scrambled to pack up the camp as quickly as possible. "How's the civilian doing?"

"He's fine," Integra said, as she pushed through the tent flap. "Insufferably nervous, but I don't think we're going to have any trouble from –"

She stopped short as they entered the tent. At one end of the tent was the stack of papers she had given the man, abandoned and unsigned. At the other, the radio operator, who was lying prone and unconscious on the ground, with a large, bruised lump quickly forming on his head and a bloodied pewter crucifix lying beside him.

There was no sign of the man Seras had brought back.

"_What – !_" Integra growled, her face twisting into an expression of shock and anger. Seras was faster to read the situation; she remained silent, darting to the other side of the tent and bursting outthe flap.

Captain Gershwin rushed to the side of the unconscious soldier, swearing profusely all the while. Integra left him to it, rushing to follow Seras outside. As she moved, a cold feeling of dread gripped her tightly and chilled her insides, horribly. _Another mistake_, her mind told her, on the edge of panic. _Another, stupid, idiotic, arrogant mistake. When would she learn? _

_And how many would die _this_ time?_

Integra shoved the tent flap aside and emerged at the rear of the camp. Seras stood there, alone, looking around wildly. There was still no sign of the man.

"How was _nobody_ here to stop him?" Seras asked.

Integra pinched the bridge of her nose. "Everyone was at the front of the camp to guard against the monster," she moaned. "_Damn_ me for an idiot. Can you track him?" she asked, desperately.

Seras nodded. "I can smell him even now, but it won't be easy catching up to him. My Control Art's re-locked now that the monster's dead, and I won't be able to release it again for this – he _is_ human, after all."

Integra growled. "Damn useless thing. Remind me to bring my sword to the next Round Table meeting so I can beat some sense into them." She looked around the camp, desperately searching for a solution. "Seras, take a handful of soldiers and track that ridiculous fool down by _any_ means necessary. We don't know his name, we don't have his records – there's no telling what might happen if his gets away with what he's seen here."

Seras saluted, sharply. "On it, Sir. Though if I may say, I don't think there's much reason to panic. That man was _terrified_ when I found him. I'd say he's gone running out of fear more than an attempt to breach our security."

Integra's face was grim. "I'd say the same thing, Seras – except that he used a _crucifix_ to incapacitate Gershwin's man. And that says to me that we're facing someone who knew what he was dealing with from the start, or at the very least someone who _thought_ he knew. This may be a far greater matter than it seems, I'm afraid."

"Well, let's just hope it isn't," Seras said, dashing off to gather a company of soldiers.

Integra watched her go, and then stood alone in the darkness, helpless and breathing heavily. "Bloody hell," she swore into the night.

"Bloody _hell_."

* * *

Eddie Holloway ran until his lungs burned, and then he ran some more. He paid no attention to where he was going – only ran, focusing on nothing more than getting Away, and doing so as fast as was humanely possible. The knapsack he carried with him weighed him down, but he clung to it as desperately as he might a newborn child.

Behind him, the dark, ragged skeleton of London loomed large. Ten years was a long time, true, but it took even longer to rebuild an entire city, and so half-finished buildings and slender cranes and jagged scaffolding still made up most of the horizon. Eddie hadn't been to the city since the night it burned – since the night he'd seen _that girl_ for the first time – but the half-built, open-ribbed state the city was in now scared him even more, somehow. Perhaps it was how much of a shadow the city had become. He'd read the reports on it; there were still streets and buildings left as nothing but uncleared rubble, and they hadn't even _tried_ to rebuild the Underground yet. Instead, the tunnels simply remained, dark and abandoned, forgotten beneath the city.

Very little of that was Eddie's concern at the moment, of course, but somehow he felt that it was the ghost of London he was running from now, just as much as the monsters who must even now have been tailing him through the night.

He turned a corner and reached a long, narrow stretch of road. There was a bridge at the end of it – if he could just make it to the other side of the river, than maybe . . . well. That was a bridge he'd cross when he came to it, quite literally so in fact. Eddie took a deep breath and took off running again, feeling uncomfortably like a latter-day Ichabod as his faltering steps brought the bridge closer and closer.

_Now_, Eddie thought, grimly, _if only the Headless Horseman doesn't show up . . . _

Even as the notion crossed his mind, however, Eddie suddenly became aware of heavy, galloping footsteps coming his way through the night. He froze, and looked back, frantic. He couldn't see very far into the darkness, but the sound was coming closer all the same. He turned to resume his desperate run . . .

. . . And screamed in terror as something jumped from the roof of one of the houses lining the side of the road, knocking him bodily to the ground.

It was the girl. Seras. Eddie felt his guts twist and go cold as she approached him, fire in her eyes. The protective gleam he'd seen before was gone now, so when he looked into her eyes now there was nothing but burning fury looking back at him. She reached out for him.

Eddie panicked. Frantically, he plunged a hand into his knapsack and emerged with the first thing his fingers touched: the can of mace. He raised it and sprayed it into the girl's face in a single, fluid, terrified motion.

Seras screamed in pain at the attack and fell back, collapsing awkwardly on the ground. Eddie scrambled to his feet, letting the can drop with a hollow clatter, and ran off the road, darting between the houses and into the night, his mind shouting all the while.

_OhGodohGodohGodohGodohGod_, it said. _OhGodohGodohGod__ I can't believe that actually _worked_ ohGodohGodohGodohGodohGod. . . _

His breath ragged, Eddie stopped and concentrated, forcing that part of his head to stay calm and quiet, and focusing his entire being on just one thought:

_Get to the river_.

* * *

Seras clawed at her face, her eyes and nose burning with pain. As she managed to sit up, she could hear heavy, running footsteps approaching; the boots of the soldiers she'd brought with her to track the escapee. Well, at least now she knew that Integra had been right not to underestimate the little sod.

The soldiers rushed to Seras' side, grouping about her with concern. "Are you all right?" one of them asked, out of breath. "Did he hurt you?"

"_No_," Seras replied, coughing, through clenched teeth. "No, I am most certainly _not _all right. _Garlic_. That bloody stupid bastard put _garlic_ in a can of _mace, _I don't even _know_ how . . . "

"Can you still track him?" Another soldier asked, looking toward the spot where Eddie had vanished to.

Seras shook her head miserably, eyes still screwed up tight from the pain. Red tears slithered down her cheeks. "My nose is clogged up like crazy. I can't smell _anything_ right now."

"We'll keep going without you, then. Someone will stay here and help you back to camp."

"No," Seras said, shaking her head again and rising shakily to her feet. "You'll never find him. Not on your own, anyway. I need a clean nasal passage, _now_." She pointed, blindly, to the soldiers. Her eyes were still shut tight. "One of you give a me a gun. Make sure it's got regular bullets in it, not silver ones. Quickly!"

The soldiers looked between themselves nervously, but after a moment one of them did as Seras asked, handing over a stubby pistol. She grabbed it, and pressed the barrel up against her own nose. All of the soldiers immediately took a step back.

"_Ohhh_," Seras moaned, quietly, as she slowly pulled back on the trigger. "This is gonna _hurt_ . . . "

* * *

Eddie's heart nearly stopped when he heard the crack of a gunshot echo out past the rooftops, but he pressed on all the same. He didn't have a moment to lose.

Rushing out from behind a building, Eddie suddenly found himself on the edge of the river at last. It was the Thames, one of the widest points of it, stretching out cold and dark into the night. He could still see the bridge he'd been meaning to cross, off in the distance to his left, but that was another matter now. Here, there was a short pier that stretched out into the rushing waters, and Eddie ran to the edge of it, staring with apprehension at the cold darkness below his feet. It was a long shot, but it was his only chance.

Reaching into his knapsack once more, Eddie pulled out the bottle of whiskey he'd brought along, breathing a sigh of relief to see that it miraculously hadn't been broken. Removing the cap, he upended the entire bottle over his head, dousing himself with it and letting the stink of alcohol seep into his skin and his clothes. It was a trick he'd gotten the idea for after reading _Fahrenheit 451_, and as he tossed the empty bottle to one side Eddie thought to himself that anybody who'd ever called science fiction useless didn't know the first thing they were talking about.

Finally, Eddie dropped the voice recorder and his camera pen into a plastic Ziploc bag, which he stuffed tightly into his pocket, and prepared to make the leap into the water. As he did so, though, a sound came to him from through the night. Eddie hesitated, and turned to look behind him.

Something was coming.

* * *

For a moment, Seras Victoria's face was nothing more than a ragged, bloody mess. Then the spray of blood and skin halted, and reversed, rushing back to its source and knitting itself back together in seconds. Seras gasped in pain as the last of her face pulled itself back together, and then shook her head and breathed in, her sense of smell restored.

She opened her eyes. They burned, brightly, once more.

"Follow me," Seras said, sprinting off into the night. "And _hurry_."

They hurried. Rushing through the streets and the dark shadows of empty houses and buildings, doing their very best to keep up with the breathless, tireless girl who ran before them. Seras was aware of the soldiers behind her, but she was far more concerned with finding what she'd been sent after. Now, more than ever before, time was of the essence.

Seras turned a corner in her blind pursuit of the man's scent, and suddenly found herself standing only a few meters away from the bank of the Thames. She reeled – normally the river wasn't a problem, but it had taken a _lot _of blood and energy to pull off her little regeneration trick, and now the mere sight of running water made her unbearably sick to her stomach.

A little pier stretched away from the bank, and at the end of it was the man, clambering atop the railing as he prepared to jump into the river. He stopped as Seras approached, looking back at her with panicked fear in his eyes.

"Stop!" Seras shouted, desperately. He was too far out over the water, now – she couldn't follow him herself, and the soldiers behind still hadn't caught up with her. "Stop! Please! We won't hurt you, just come back, now!"

The man wasn't listening. He turned away, and prepared to jump.

Out of options, Seras pointed the pistol the soldiers had given her at the man and held it steady. She agonized, her finger frozen on the trigger. She couldn't let him get away, couldn't afford letting someone who'd seen what he'd seen get away. Couldn't let Hellsing be compromised.

But he was _human_, and she'd sworn to herself long ago that under no circumstances would she ever, _ever _–

But then it was already too late. In Seras' split second of hesitation, the man jumped, plunging into the Thames, where the current and the darkness swept him away just as quickly as the wind had the monster's ashes. Behind herself, Seras heard the running footsteps of the soldiers, heard the deafening cracks of their rifles as they fired into the river and watched the bullets whizz past, vanishing into the river beyond.

But it was already too late.

The man was gone.

* * *

_Another brief note, written by me and containing some words: My dearest thanks to all of you who have been reading this and sharing your thoughts so far. I enjoy hearing what you think, and as always, I'm happy to hear any thoughts you might have for how I might make it even better. The end of this chapter is an act break, so along with the pause in the plot, I'm going to take a very short time off writing it. You don't have to worry about me abandoning this story; I have no intention not to finish what I've started. I just need a week or three to take care of some other stuff. Starting next time, you can expect a change of scenery and a few more familiar faces (and what the hey, maybe even a few answers). Until then, my thanks again, and best of luck in everything. _


	5. My Late Breakfast with Heinkel

It was, by all accounts, a very pleasant and agreeable Saturday morning. The sun was out, birds sang merrily, and a faint but not uncomfortable breeze whistled through the swaying treetops.

Amidst it all and slightly to the left of things, one of the most dangerous people in the world sat across the street from a garden, currently engaged in drinking tea and eating a bagel. Patiently. She was drinking Darjeeling. Not because she particularly liked Darjeeling, but because she usually favored Earl Gray and was, on this particular morning, feeling adventurous enough to try something new.

Funnily enough, being in this sort of mood did not improve Heinkel Wolfe's disposition in the slightest.

Certainly the sunlight and the nearby sound of children's laughter helped things a little bit, not to mention the teacup (which, not at all according to her preferences, was pink), but that still didn't quite mask the sharp, jagged image Heinkel struck wherever she went. She still had the messy, unevenly-cut hair, the calculating eyes, the ugly bullet scars that stretched her mouth into a crooked rictus grin and the torn bandages that looped around her face and drifted slowly in the breeze. Her shoulders were wrapped in an ash-grey cassock, the stark simplicity of the garment doing nothing to mask the terror it held.

There could be no doubting that the woman was _almost _as terrifying in appearance as she was in her capabilities.

Heinkel took another bite of her bagel and munched on it, thoughtfully.

It wasn't really a vacation, seeing as she was here on business – off-the-record business, but business all the same – but she savored her moment of repose all the same. She couldn't feel the sunlight as well as she once had, not through skin that sewed itself up in seconds or mottled, grimacing scars, but it was there, and she did her best not to forget simple things like that.

She was a different Heinkel than the heretic-hunting soldier of ten years ago.

_That_ Heinkel probably would have shot herself before drinking out of a pink teacup. She chuckled, hoarsely, at the thought of it, and glanced up, casually. Something in the distance caught her attention, and she laughed again. Well now, she thought – _speaking _of pink . . .

At the other end of the road, another figure appeared, wearing a very bulky, very pink hooded jacket and making its way carefully through the crowds of people who idled between drinking their own morning tea and coffee and wandering off into the nearby gardens. Pointed blonde hair poked out from the neck of the jacket, and within the shadow of the hood Heinkel could see burning red eyes looking out at her.

Seras Victoria, Hellsing's monster. The Draculina. So, this was it, then – the time had come. Grinning madly, Heinkel fixed her eyes on the approaching girl, reached into the depths of her cassock . . .

. . . And emerged with her glasses, which she pushed up her nose as the young vampire pulled up a chair opposite of Heinkel and plopped down in it, looking bored and just the slightest bit sleep-deprived. Heinkel waved, lightly, as the other girl sat down.

And that was the biggest difference between Old Heinkel and New Heinkel, she thought. Old Heinkel would have been like Father Anderson, would have hunted every last monster on the face of the planet to extinction regardless of who they were or what they did. New Heinkel, on the other hand, had been convinced – in part by watching two of the world's most powerful forces for good fight _each other _while the true evil ran rampant in the skies, and in part by a certain overly friendly and slightly inhuman visitor to her hospital room in the fallout of the whole mess – that maybe, just maybe, there was something to be had in cooperating with a Protestant vampire after all.

. . . Or at least in agreeing to have tea with them every once in a while. Heinkel took another sip out of her cup as Seras settled miserably into her chair.

"Why did we have do this in Brighton?" the vampire asked, glancing sourly around the courtyard.

Heinkel shrugged. "I like the Pavilion."

Seras sat up straighter, and rolled her eyes. "No, you like making me go way out of my bloody way to come to a city that's right next to the Channel, which makes me seasick, because you're an absolute rotter. Plus it's eleven and there's hardly a cloud in the sky, so I had to put on this stupid thing." She motioned to her hooded jacket. "I look like a Hello Kitty Hobo."

Heinkel laughed. "Well," she said, "you still won't let us try to kill each other, so I have to find some way to have fun, don't I?" She took another bite of her bagel. "I am sorry about the time of day, though. I'd forgotten that sun doesn't agree with you.

Seras raised an eyebrow, incredulously. "You _forgot _that a _vampire _doesn't like it when it's _sunny out?_"

"Well I don't know!" Heinkel shrugged, helplessly. "I didn't have a whole lot of time for this and I figured it wouldn't be a problem. I've seen you outside during the day plenty of times before, haven't I?"

"Right," Seras said. She began counting off on her fingers. "Once when there was a giant _ash cloud_ covering London, more times than I count when it was raining or overcast, and then there was that thing in Borneo with the _bats_ . . . "

Heinkel shivered. "I don't want to talk about Borneo."

"Right, well, neither do I, but the point is, _no_, sunlight definitely does _not_ agree with me. Fortunately for your schedule I still have this stupid thing." Seras stretched out the front of the jacket, looking down at the faded letters printed across it. "'RARL.' I don't even know what that's supposed to stand for. I got this in South America, you know, _long_ story . . . "

"You're avoiding the question," Heinkel said, finishing her tea. "You're the one who asked for this meeting, but you still haven't told me why you wanted to speak with me. What's going on, Seras?" She fixed the girl with a serious look.

Seras sighed. "I'm getting to it. Don't worry, I didn't drag you out here for nothing. I'm just being cranky. I haven't been getting nearly enough sleep lately, and I don't normally stay up this late. What have _you _been so busy with?"

Heinkel smirked. "That's classified."

"Oh, _please_."

A wider smile. "It's ridiculous, I swear," Heinkel said. "Nothing you'd care about, only M'Quve's new obsession. Section Three gave him a present a few weeks ago and he's been trying to figure out how to open it ever since."

Seras tilted her head. "Section Three?"

"Mmm." Heinkel nodded. "Matthew. Relics."

Seras snorted. "What did _they _give you that could possibly keep Iscariot's attention for that long? A crucifix that shoots blessed napalm?"

Heinkel grinned even wider. "Classified," she said, again, amused at Seras' annoyance. "But this is getting a little too one-sided for me. Why am I here, Seras? I'm losing patience."

Seras looked down, uncomfortably, and fidgeted. She drummed her fingers on the table, sighed, and muttered something that was too quiet to hear.

"What?"

Seras glanced up at Heinkel, sheepishly. "I _said_, Hellsing's had a security breach. A week ago."

Heinkel boggled. "A _week?_ What have you been _doing _since then?"

"Adventures in bureaucracy, mainly." Seras frowned and dug her hands into her coat pockets. "Sir Integra's about ready to have a stroke the way she's been yelling at the Round Table. They have another meeting today, but I doubt it'll really get anywhere. The problem is, the leak is a civilian – we don't know who he is, just some moppet who saw some things he shouldn't have and managed to slip through our fingers – but we can't look for him the normal way; setting up perimeters and conducting a public search and all that, since, well, we're a top-secret monster-hunting army. Any operation that isn't as under-the-radar as possible isn't an operation that's happening.

"So that's what I need you for." Seras looked at Heinkel, her expression earnest. "Someone to find our man, figure out how much he knows, and keep it out of the public's sight. He managed to get away by masking his scent and taking a dive – last I saw of him he'd jumped into the Thames, near the housing projects they built on top of Dartford."

Heinkel considered that. "Well," she said, eventually, "you came to the right person, at least. No offence, but Hellsing has a bit of a blunderbuss approach to things – Section Thirteen prides itself on focusing just a _bit _more on the investigative side of things. I don't see why you can't just play detective yourself, though."

"I've got something else I need to look into," Seras said, her gaze shifting aside.

"Oh? And what might that be?"

Seras stood up, and a faint smile drifted across her face. "A monster I killed gave me a present," she said, "and I've been spending the past week trying to figure out how to open it."

"Hardy-har-har," Heinkel grumbled. "All right, I'll see what I can do about your little fly on the wall, but only because it gives me an excuse to get away from M'Quve and his stupid new toy."

Seras nodded. "Thank you. If you find him, Heinkel, make sure you don't underestimate the situation – I'm not sure what we're dealing with, but I have a few ideas, and I don't like any of them."

Heinkel took off her glasses and raised an eyebrow at Seras. "Oh?" she said. "I don't think you'll have to worry about any trouble I might get into, Seras. After all – " she smirked.

" – _I _kick arse for the _Lord_."

* * *

After Seras had left, Heinkel wandered through the Pavilion Gardens, mulling the situation over in her head – and making her way, in a roundabout fashion, to a more secluded area where she might contact M'Quve and the rest of Section Thirteen. It wasn't a conversation she was looking forward to – not much, anyway. Over the years her friendship with Seras had become something between being an open secret and an elephant in the room for both organizations. Neither M'Quve nor Sir Integral cared much about it so long as the jobs got done and they both still got to argue with each other, but that didn't keep it from being a sensitive situation all the same.

. . . Especially considering the details. Killing monsters together was one thing, but Heinkel worried about just what M'Quve would think of her doing a _favor _for Hellsing. There wasn't much one could really do to spin the idea of assisting the unhealthy competition, but then, Heinkel thought, that was just life. She would just have to think of something, and she didn't doubt that she would.

It was just the details that always made things such a bother.

Heinkel stopped under a tree, leaning heavily against the shady trunk and looking about the garden. She was effectively alone – none of the other visitors were in earshot, at least – and, with a sigh and no more excuses left, she produced a slim mobile phone, pulled it open, and thumbed the first number on the speed dial.

It rang, once, twice – and then, on the other line, an enthusiastic and achingly familiar voice rang out. Heinkel grimaced as the uncomfortably silky voice of M'Quve – Bishop Maxwell's eager successor and the current head of Section Thirteen – rang hollowly from the mobile in her hand.

"_Heinkel! So glad to hear from you, I trust your travels find you well and blessed?_"

"Very much so, Bishop," Heinkel replied. "May I speak to you now, Bishop? I trust I am not interrupting important work with the rest of Iscariot."

"_Not at all, Heinkel, not at all. Just spending our time uncovering secrets, as always._" M'Quve laughed, lightly. It was a smooth, slimy sound.

Heinkel sighed, again. "You're still trying to open the box Section Three gave you, then."

"_Oh, but of course!_" Another smooth laugh. "_We are Section Thirteen, Heinkel. You of all people should understand what that means. We do not let a puzzle go unsolved once it has come our way, do we not?" _

"With respect, Bishop, I don't see how this particular puzzle benefits us in any way," Heinkel said, evenly. "If I were you I'd just tell that Section Three agent to take the thing back where it came from and let us get back to work. He's still there, isn't he?"

"_Of course he is,_" M'Quve's voice said. "_Brother Kästner has been only the most polite of guests since he so generously graced our place of residence with such a superb gift, Heinkel. Why should I turn him away now? And besides, you never know just how useful something is until you can tell _what_ it is, hmm? I believe we shall wait until we have managed to find a way to open the box before passing judgment on its contents. The potential benefits outweigh the potential risks, Heinkel. You must understand._"

Heinkel grimaced. "If that is your decision, Bishop."

"_It is, Heinkel. But you have me at a disadvantage, now. You told me you were meeting a contact for information today – what warrants such urgent communication?_"

For a moment, Heinkel considered all of the lies that she could offer, but decided in the end that the truth would be the simplest way to go about things. She took a deep breath.

"Hellsing has had a security breach, Bishop. I'm going to investigate."

For a long, agonizing moment, the other end of the line was dead. When M'Quve spoke again, his voice was even thicker than normal, oozing out of the phone with very carefully contained intensity. Heinkel wondered, uneasily, if perhaps the truth hadn't been the best plan of action after all.

"_Hellsing,_" M'Quve's voice said. "_And tell me, Heinkel, precisely how helping our friends the heretics will benefit this organization in any way at all – if you don't mind me exercising a bit of your own logic, that is._"

"Not at all, Bishop," Heinkel replied, her voice even. She'd had her counter-argument prepared before she even called, after all, and she wasn't going to let M'Quve's nasty attitude derail her now. All she had to do was be careful about what she said and how she said it – a sort of game, really, like chess. Or, more accurately, a particularly high-stakes round of _Mother May-I_.

In that respect, Heinkel reflected, M'Quve wasn't all that different from how Maxwell had been at all.

She pushed the thought from her mind, and spoke. "This is a delicate situation, Bishop. Hellsing hardly knows _anything_ about who their leak is or what his motives are."

"_Your point, Heinkel?_"

"My _point_, Bishop, is that for all we know this situation may well prove a threat to Iscariot as well. How do we know that this spy isn't targeting _every _monster-hunting agency out there, and not just Hellsing? He may well know _more _about us than he does about them."

"_Implausible._"

"But not impossible," Heinkel said, her frown slowly giving way to a smug grin. "At this point, Bishop, I think we should wait until we've ascertained just what he knows before passing judgment on whether it affects us or not. The potential benefits outweigh the potential risks, Bishop – " the grin grew even wider " – that _is _what _you _would say, after all, isn't it?"

This time, the silence was even longer, and M'Quve's tone in the words that followed was even slimier than it had been before – but there was a note of defeat in it as well, and Heinkel knew even before he had finished speaking that she had won.

"_A fair point, Heinkel. You believe you will be able to find this thorn that so troubles Hellsing?_"

"I do, Bishop."

"_Then I give you one week, Heinkel. You will call and report your findings to me and only me at the end of each day – and in the event you do manage to locate this spy, you will inform Section Thirteen of such a development before you even _consider_ giving the news to Hellsing. Am I making myself _quite _clear?_"

Heinkel smiled. "Yes, Bishop. I believe you are. Oh, and good luck opening your box," she added, with just the slightest hint of friendly derision in her voice.

"_And good luck finding your needle in a haystack,_" M'Quve answered, with a far less amused tone. "_God be with you, Heinkel_."

"And you, Bishop," Heinkel said. She snapped the mobile shut and returned it to the inside pockets of her cassock. She'd left that conversation in a far better mood than she had been planning, and now, as she stood in the park and considered the wind rushing through the treetops, she ruminated on what came next. Time, it seemed, for some good old fashioned detective work.

Heinkel laughed a little, despite herself. _This_, she thought, might actually be _fun_.

* * *

Gently, and with a soft little _click_, the ivory and brass handle of a telephone was placed carefully back into its cradle. The noise of it echoed, faintly, in the vaulted and high-ceilinged room.

Needlessly auspicious circumstances for a telephone, perhaps, but Iscariot – who spent most of their time slinking quietly in the shadows – was the sort of organization that occasionally had to be needlessly auspicious about _something_, regardless of how simple. That was just plain old human nature, after all.

Running a tired hand through his stringy hair, M'Quve turned away from the phone and back to the business at hand. He was a relaxed, angular man, and surrounded by gothic architecture as he was now he almost seemed like something that had slinked off the corner of the Sistine ceiling and oozed off to take care of more important business. Shadows danced across his smooth, sallow face, and as he stepped back into the light, the illumination, in clearing the darkness from his face, only revealed the fire that smoldered behind his eyes.

In the center of the room and in the harsh focus of the lights, there was a box. It rested gently on a stone pedestal, guarded at each edge by a stern, motionless agent of Section Thirteen. It was about the size of an office desk, and wooden, covered from top to bottom in intricately looping carvings – swaying trees, mighty towers, and, curling through it all, dozens upon dozens of interlocked hands, each at the end of a long, curling arm. On top of the box's lid, a flowing sea of repeating patterns came together to form one enormous symbol: a circle, cut through at the center by a large X.

M'Quve lay his hands on the box, gently. It was beautiful, captivating. No, it was more than that – it was his _obsession_, and he was determined to unlock its secrets. The symbol on the lid he assumed to be an Irish Cross – even if the design was different from any he'd seen before – but other than that the box was a complete enigma. Even something so simple as opening it had, so far, proved impossible.

. . . _So far_ being the operative term, of course. Being the section chief of Iscariot did not, M'Quve knew, mean giving up.

He raised his eyes and looked across the surface of the box to the other side of the room. A young-looking, clean-cut man with blonde hair stood there, smiling faintly and looking politely bemused. A roman numeral three was emblazoned on the shoulder of his cassock in red stitching.

Brother Kästner. The man from Matthew. He looked back at M'Quve quietly.

"That was your paladin on the phone, wasn't it?" Kästner asked, after a moment. "Nothing I should worry about, I hope?"

M'Quve shook his head. "Not at all, my friend, not at all. She simply seeks to find a spy, who, I understand, has been plaguing our Protestant rivals. I am hesitant to allow it, of course, but I have been . . . _persuaded_ that such an action may prove beneficial to us – one way or another." He glanced at the wooden box beneath his fingertips. " . . . Though she does seem to harbor some concerns about your wonderful gift, brother Kästner."

Kästner smiled. "Then I hope you _persuaded _her otherwise, Bishop M'Quve. This item is one of Section Three's most valued relics – it is a mystery even to us." His smile grew. "But I have confidence that you will be able to solve our puzzle, Bishop."

"As do I, brother Kästner," M'Quve replied, his gaze dropping to the box's surface once more. "As do I."

* * *

And below it all – somewhere underground, somewhere in the light that blazed so harshly through the darkness, somewhere amid the broken crates and rusted equipment that lay strewn throughout the tunnels that snaked their way through the belly of the Earth, somebody laughed.

It was not a pleasant sound.

At the center of the infernal, buzzing, blinding light, a short man with mismatched eyes – the one called _Drei _– stood at a grimy, dusty computer monitor and watched, with interest, the sights and sounds of the world above. He gazed through another's eyes, listened through another's ears, and as the sights and voices filled the dirty, forgotten underground room, a shadow appeared behind Drei and began to laugh.

A tall shadow, skinny, and clothed in rags. A shadow with shining, cracked glasses, and hair that was both too long and covered in filth. He walked with a halting, crooked limp, and a torn, rotting toy bear dangled from his fingertips.

_Ein_. The other. Ein peered over Drei's shoulder, stroked his bear, and slowly, hollowly, he laughed.

The laugh went: "Ahah. Ahahahaha hee hee HA HA HA ohoho ha hee ho HA. Heh."

It was, in other words, the rather unpleasant sound of someone who did not laugh often, but understood what it meant, albeit for all the wrong reasons. It was terrible. It was mad. It was Ein.

Drei shivered, and turned to face his taller companion. "_Ein_," he said, softly, as the conversation they eavesdropped upon continued to echo out of worn-out speakers and bounce haphazardly through the room. "_Ein_, do you know vhat this means for us? This is _ein schreckliches Problem! _Ve are even more _kaputt _then ve vhere beforr, _Ein!_ Ve are _super-kaputt!_"

"I beg to differ, _Drei_," Ein said. His fingers curled around the bear. "Und so does _Herr Teddybär_. This is a gift, _Drei_. This is _ein apportunity, ja? _Ve are getting a brand new toy to play vith, and ve do not even have to go looking for it – _she _vill find her vay to _us_." Ein let loose with another of his cracked, wheezing laughs. "This vill be _fun_, Drei," he said, through cackles. "This vill be _herrlich_. Ha, I can't even _remember _the last time I felt so!"

Suddenly, Ein's head jerked forward in a violent, jerking twitch. Blue sparks erupted from the back of his skull and bounced away into the air. He growled, softly.

"But then again," Ein said, his tone turning sour and angry, "I don't really remember much of _anything _these days." Another sparking spasm from his head. "But ve haff _vays_ off solving problems vith gaps in our memory, don't ve _Herr Teddybär?"_

He turned his gaze to the far corner of the room, toward another, shorter shadow. It lay still, bound in chains and locked behind the bars of a cage. Ein watched it with cold determination.

Drei wrung his hands, nervously. "Are you _sure _about this, _Ein?_"

"I am _absolut sicher, Drei_," Ein said, dancing back into the depths of the room in his lilting, crooked limp. "A paladin, all off our own – a _regenerator_." He laughed again, and it was even worse than before. "Fun. Oh yes. This vill be _fun_. Vhat better, vhat more _deserving _audience could I possibly haff than an agent of _der Vatikan? _Who better to bear witness to mein greatest achievement, to mein _triumph – "_

" – to mein_ Walpurgisnacht Eternal!_"

* * *

_My thanks for your patience, everybody. This is the chapter where it _might _have helped to have read "Visiting Hours" beforehand, but, as I promised at the beginning, I've done my best to make it so you don't really have to if you don't want to. Also, I know this was a long wait for not a lot of answers. However, as of this chapter, you (the lovely readers, that is) now have every clue you need to solve the central mystery of this story. My thanks again, and may I suggest breaking out the detective hats – because time is about to start running out, and fast. _


	6. Said the Spider to the Fly

The sun was still shining, but it was on its way out.

Outside the window, light waned as the sun inched closer to the horizon, staining the sky with burning, fiery light as it did so. The curtains had been drawn, however, and only a tiny sliver of the yellow-orange glow intruded through them, stretching lightly across the black-and-white tiled floor of Sir Integra's office.

The room was as Spartan as ever; the floor was vast but empty, and the only notable piece of furniture in the room was Integra's desk – which was currently occupied, not by the knight herself, but by a portable DVD player, several empty bags of transfusion blood, and Seras Victoria, dressed casually in jeans and a bright yellow T-shirt. She sat slouched in Integra's chair with her feet up on the desk, idly finishing another bag of blood and watching the DVD player's screen intently.

"_You said it was in a tavern,_" the movie said.

Seras took another draw from the transfusion bag, draining it. She set the empty pouch down on the desk and reached into an ice bucket at the foot of her seat for a fresh one.

"_It is in a tavern._"

"Yeah," Seras said aloud, opening her blood pack. "In a basement."

"_Yeah,_" the movie said. "_In a basement._"

Seras took a deep sip, and slouched farther into the chair.

"_Y'know, fightin' in a basement offers a lotta difficulties._"

"Number one being," Seras continued, "you're fighting in a basement."

"_Number one bein' yer fightin' in a basement!_"

This would have continued, and for quite some time at that; Seras was only halfway through the movie, after all, and more of them stood at the edge of the desk in a crooked stack. She was, if need be, prepared for an entire night of inactivity.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Seras' activities were cut short by a very loud and very echo-y _boom_ from the other end of the room – to be exact, the precise sound of a door being opened by someone who was very frustrated, had a lot of venting to do, and wasn't particularly concerned with the feelings of inanimate objects. Seras cast a lazy glance in the direction of the office doors, then sighed, tapped the _pause _button on her DVD player, and sat up straight.

Sir Integra stomped across the office floor to her desk with all the subtlety and restriction of a charging rhino. She passed by Seras wordlessly, going to the window and widening the gap in the curtains by a few inches as she stared outside, fuming.

"I don't know what I'm going to do with those fools," she said, finally, relaxing and turning to face Seras with a hopeless expression. "One more meeting with the Round Table like that one and I'm going to shoot every last one of them."

"Seems a bit overkill," Seras replied. "I'd think you wouldn't need much more than a flyswatter with that lot."

"That's the _problem_," Integra said, burying her face in her palm. "Ever since Sir Islands passed on I've had to deal with nothing but gormless, wet-behind-the-ears _children!_" She huffed, and looked up at Seras again. "Also, you're in my chair."

Seras shrugged. "You weren't using it," she said, standing up. "I take it your meeting didn't go particularly well."

"_That_ is the most spectacular understatement I've heard all _month_," Integra said. She reclaimed her chair and sat down in it heavily, digging into a pocket of her suit as she did so. She emerged with a small, transparent glass box, which she slammed down on the surface of the desk. Inside of it rested a burnt computer chip – the same one Seras had recovered from the monster the night of the storm.

"I _tried _to tell them the danger we could be in. The . . . " Integra faltered as she glanced at the burned computer chip. "The _implications _of something like this. But they won't listen. In fact, they're still arguing over what to do about our security leak."

"I told you, I dealt with that three days ago," Seras said. "Mostly."

"Yes, I remember." Integra glared at the young vampire. "For both our sakes, I can only hope that _whoever _you may have put your trust in is worth it."

There was an uncomfortable silence as that remark sank in; Seras' unofficial dealings with Heinkel were about the only sore spot in an otherwise unshakable friendship between her and Integra. Hastily and awkwardly making an attempt to change the subject, Seras plucked the burned computer chip from off of Integra's desk and studied it, thoughtfully.

"I'm sure you'll get through to them eventually, Sir," she said. "They can't keep you stuck in red tape forever when you've got evidence like this."

Integra produced a cigar, lit it, and drew from it deeply. Her nervous energy subsided enormously as she did so, but her aging face was still hampered by a grave expression of fear. "You're right, Seras," she said. "But I don't think we have that much time to spare. Tomorrow night is Walpurgisnacht – ten years to the day since London burned. And with everything that has been happening recently, I fear that we may have more to deal with than memorials and remembrance ceremonies."

Sir Integra looked at Seras, and when she did the younger woman felt her insides clench in pain and helplessness. Integra was looking at her, and in the knight's face there was not strength; there was no anger, or confidence, or battle-ready determination. There was fear.

Fear, and nothing else.

"Seras," she said, speaking seriously, "if there's another attack, I don't know what we'll do. I could be wrong – it could be nothing. I could be overreacting. I could be paranoid. But my underestimating our enemies is part of what caused so much damage all those years ago, and I simply cannot preclude the possibility that something terrible may descend upon us once more."

She drew deeply from her cigar again, taking no pleasure in it. "Seras, if there _is _another attack – and with everything that has happened over the past few weeks, I have reason to believe there may well be, in one form or another – we're not ready. I don't know what we're going to do."

The room fell silent again. Seras, unsure how to respond for a moment, glanced at the clock on Integra's desk, and then out the window, which still had a sliver of sunlight peeking through the curtains, and then at the knight herself.

Seras strolled idly along the edge of the room. She wove a careless path across the checkerboard floor, but was still careful to go out of her way to avoid the sliver of daylight still poking through the curtains.

"Well then," she said, after the silence had gone on long enough. "In that case, I suggest we start being really clever – really, _really _fast."

* * *

Earlier that Day, Heinkel Wolfe was busy making herself useful. It was a Tuesday, that stupendously boring day of the week that wasn't so much bland as it was inconspicuous. Mondays everybody expected; Tuesdays, on the other hand, had a tendency to sneak up on you. Heinkel wasn't entirely sure what she was supposed to be expecting as she walked down the suburban street to her destination, but her twitching, nervous trigger finger was ready for anything.

She'd spent the last two and a half days squeezing the world for information, and it hadn't been in vain. This was something that Heinkel was particularly proud of; Hellsing (and, she had to admit to herself, any of the more old-fashioned members of Iscariot) would simply have torn their way through the underworld, messily and bloodily getting whatever information was required and leaving whoever had it to be sorely regretful that they'd kept it to themselves that long.

Heinkel, however, preferred a more subtle approach. At first.

Heinkel knew that a terrified little man crawling out of the Thames in the dead of night was not a normal thing to see – and, moreover, she knew that _someone _would, inevitably, have seen it. She knew if she asked enough questions and made enough educated guesses she'd be able to draw a fairly accurate perimeter. Working within those boundaries, it was simple process of elimination finding the exact twenty-four hour convenience shop where, a little over a week ago, a short and soaking-wet man would have burst through the door, looking to buy a towel and probably a slightly warmer jacket as well.

And, of course, Heinkel knew that, if she asked permission nicely (which, for Heinkel, was a word that meant only "in a manner _not_ involving shooting") she'd be able to get the security tapes from that night. Security tapes that showed the man's face, which was a springboard that _always _got results, sooner or later.

It never did get as far as that, though.

Heinkel had been prepared to do things the hard way. She was always prepared to do things the hard way; that was, she felt, the only proper definition _of _ "prepared." But, such as it was, after a few minutes of talking to the trembling store clerk (and pointedly not shooting anything) Heinkel had found that, for all that he was prepared to elude deadly vampires and the conspiracies they lived in, the little bleeder was still stupid enough to use a credit card.

This monumental mistake had, not surprisingly, put Heinkel in a very good mood.

Unfortunately, that was earlier this morning, and now that good mood was slipping. As Heinkel slowly strolled along the sidewalk, approaching the home of Eddie Holloway (_oh, how satisfying it was just to know the rotter's name_) who used a MasterCard (_there was joke in there, though she couldn't quite think of what it was exactly_) and signed his name with little slashes going through the O's (_Heinkel hated it when people did that_), she began to redoubt herself.

It wasn't that she wasn't doing things properly. Heinkel had called M'Quve an hour ago to report what she knew, and it wasn't really like Iscariot's top soldier needed such a quaint thing as _backup _to go after one wannabe detective. But all the same, there was . . . _something_.

Heinkel didn't feel nervous very often, but she never liked it when she did.

Unfortunately, she didn't have any time left to worry to herself over it. She'd reached the address she wanted, and was standing in front of it now – a small, run-down suburban home that didn't really look much different from any of the other little houses on the street. A civilian's house, simple as that – or, alternatively, the house of a spy who knew very well what they were doing when it came to hiding in plain sight.

Well, Holloway's true nature was of no concern to Heinkel. She cared about finding him, finding out what he knew, and finding out who, if anyone, he'd told. And she'd do it, too, whether it had to be the hard way or not. Heinkel checked her guns, and approached the door of the house. It gave in to the lock picks she had brought along after only a few moments of jimmying – and then she was through.

Heinkel stepped inside, slowly. The walls beyond the door were darkened and dusty, and the whole house smelled as though it hadn't been cleaned properly in months. At the end of a short hallway that led off from the front door, Heinkel found herself in a small sitting room, with a musty couch at one end and an outdated, ugly television at the other.

There was also a staircase, leading down into what had to be the house's basement. Heinkel would have ignored it – better to check everywhere else in the house first – but as she was about to move on to the next room, she heard a noise. A faint rustling, like the sound of dry paper, or perhaps a particularly unhealthy intake of breath.

It was, naturally, coming from the stairs leading into the basement. Heinkel hesitated, then drew her guns and moved slowly toward the stairs. She began to descend, walking down first one step, then the next, and then the next. From the darkness below, the sound came again.

Suddenly, Heinkel froze. It wasn't because of what was in front of her, in the basement – it was because of what had just now appeared behind her. Not something that was _seen _so much as _sensed_, but it was there all the same.

Or rather, _they _were there. And all three of them armed. One of them spoke.

"Bad luck, Paladin."

* * *

Some time later – long after Heinkel had first stepped through the doors of Eddie Holloway's home, after Seras and Sir Integra's conversation in her office, even – M'Quve moved hurriedly through the dimly lit hallways that led to the room where the box, his beloved mystery, was being kept. He didn't know what it was that had compelled him to come and see it this late at night, but whatever it was, he had known right away that he would not be able to resist.

At this hour, the place seemed almost deserted, so the Iscariot Bishop's footsteps seemed to echo just as loudly as a charging army. Or, at least, to him they did. His ears had been playing tricks on him lately, M'Quve thought – or was that his eyes?

Or both?

Whatever it was, it wasn't important. The doorway he wanted was being guarded by two silent agents of Iscariot, but they each moved to the side the moment M'Quve stepped into their line of sight. He walked past them with a curt, wordless nod, slipping through the doors and shutting them tightly behind him as he went. And once he was inside, M'Quve was alone. No guards stood by this late, not even Brother Kästner stood by to watch the mysterious gift that he had brought from the Vatican's Section Three into the hands of Iscariot. No, it was only M'Quve, all alone.

M'Quve . . . and the _box_.

He wanted so dearly to find out how to open it, how to unlock the mysteries inside. But, cold as ever, the enormous block stood silent, and would not open. M'Quve approached it, gingerly, and lay a hand upon the carved lid, casting a sharp eye to cameras mounted on the chamber walls as he did so.

They were there for security, of course, but it wasn't as though they really did much good. Whatever properties the box may or may not have possessed, it seemed to positively _despise _the presence of cameras. Any attempts to film the thing resulted only in ruined tapes, filled with video tearing, static, and the most horrific sort of audio distortion – keening, squealing, screeching sounds that made it almost seem as though the tapes were _screaming_.

But that was nothing more than a simple mystery, and all of the box's mysteries, M'Quve was certain, would be solved in time. He gazed lovingly at the thing, his eyes drinking in the beautiful carving, the painstaking, intricate loops and patterns that made up the Irish Cross on the lid. He tilted his head, as he looked it over – it was almost, he thought, as though the cross was actually –

Suddenly, M'Quve drew his hand back in surprise.

The box was _warm_. No – it was _hot,_ burning hot, almost. But when, shaken at this unexpected development, M'Quve prodded the box again, he found that it had just as quickly grown cold. Freezing to the touch. Feeling something in his chest clench, M'Quve began to cough, a rattling, wheezing, awful sound. He'd developed the cough about a week ago, but now it seemed to be getting worse, as though he were gagging, gasping desperately for breath.

After a few minutes of this, the coughing fit passed and the room grew quiet once more. M'Quve looked at the box again. In the low light, it almost seemed to him that the carvings on the side were moving, wriggling and writhing of their own accord. The trees swayed in an impossible wind, the towers trembled, and all around them, the _hands_, the thin, skinny – _no_, not skinny, M'Quve thought in a split second of clarity, not skinny but _slender_ – hands moved and clawed, their long, snaking arms wrapped tightly around it all.

M'Quve reeled. His head was pounding, from the coughing fit he assumed, but it was terrible all the same. The box seemed to be pulsing, vibrating, shaking on its stone pedestal with the weight and rhythm of an enormous, unfathomable heart.

The box spoke.

For a moment, M'Quve couldn't believe it, _wouldn't _believe it – the voice had no sound, but only clawed its way through his mind as a cold, clammy thought that most certainly _was not his own_ – but the box spoke, all the same.

_Found_

_You_

The words were broken, stilted. Even as they wormed their way through M'Quve's mind, he felt that they were broken, cracked, split into pieces somehow. But broken as they were, the words came all the same. M'Quve beat at the sides of his head, frantically, desperately trying to get that awful non-sound out of his head.

_Found_

_You_

_Wan_

_T you_

_Please_

_Want out _

_Out_

_Plea_

_Se_

M'Quve staggered back, grasping for the door which he knew was there, but which he could not find while the box warped the air in the room, and while that voice kept burrowing into his mind. He clutched, desperately, at empty air, over and over again.

_Co_

_Me back re_

_Mem_

_Ber remember the _

_Filth_

_Of_

_Out let _

_Me _

_Out _

M'Quve screamed. It was an effort; he had to force the sound to come up and out of his throat, the same as in a nightmare. And, just as in a nightmare, he felt like his feet were rooted to the floor, like the box was holding him there, squeezing him, strangling him. But he screamed all the same, and the doors burst open as the men from outside rushed in to help the Bishop, now a sweating, shaking wreck, clawing at his head and tearing out his hair by the roots.

The moment the doors open and the agents came in, the box grew still once again, and the air cleared, and M'Quve could breathe again at last, though he fell into another coughing fit almost immediately. But the clawing, invading voice in his mind took an extra second to fade, and as it lingered, it spoke again a final time.

_Re_

_Gards_

_M'Quve_

_

* * *

_

Earlier that day, long before M'Quve would even think of going to the box at so late an hour, Heinkel Wolfe was still dealing with the slightly more pertinent problem of having been ambushed by three men who almost certainly intended to kill her.

Not that they were going to be a problem for much longer, though.

Heinkel whirled. The three men behind her were dead before they had even managed to squeeze off so much as a single shot from the guns they held, and each one of them died with a look of stunned amazement painted across the remains of their face. Heinkel saw the glimmer of fangs in their wide-open mouths, and each of the three burned and burst into dust as they hit the floor.

Vampires. Which meant that Heinkel had either misjudged what sort of man Eddie Holloway was . . . or, much more likely, somebody _else_ had managed to find him before she had.

There was little time to think, however. Already, another four of the thuggish, simple vampires were rushing at Heinkel from across the room, pouring out of the parts of the house that she hadn't looked in yet. They shot at her, and the bullets connected, hitting her in the chest and her arms. One passed cleanly through her leg, the hole it left filling up with blood a moment later.

Heinkel hardly noticed. Against her regenerator's skin the bullets might as well have been little more than pinpricks. She shot the newcomers dead, and rushed across the living room to try and find where the rest of them had gone.

Before she could move very far, however, there came the sound of violently splintering wood – and the thing that had been in the basement emerged at last, charging into the light and rushing toward Heinkel with blind, insane fury.

It wasn't another vampire – or maybe it _was_, or at least had _once _been – but it still held the shape of a man. Only – only it wasn't just one, but many, stitched and fused together, parts connected where they shouldn't be, faces snarling beside one another, and all its limbs bound together in a loping, monstrous cluster. It looked like some kind of horrific, experimental Frankenstein's monster; not just because of its mix-and-match nature, but because of the stitching that held it all together, pulling the flesh into that monstrous, tangled mass.

This was no natural beast, Heinkel realized with horror, the vampires who had ambushed her only seconds ago almost completely forgotten now. This was something that had been _built_, piece by awful piece, and crudely at that.

The thing lunged. Heinkel, panicking, raised her guns and shot it, over and over until both her clips were empty. The sound was deafening, but it did not, to Heinkel's dismay, drown out the creature's agonized screams.

Finally, the thing fell, slipping in its own blood and crumpling to the ground in a ruined, twisted tangle of limbs and faces. The house was quiet once more, and Heinkel breathed, deeply, in relief. With trembling hands, she reloaded her guns.

In front of her, the body sparked, and then the room was bathed in a bright flare of blue flame as it burned and crumpled to dust. Heinkel moved to step around it, cautiously, meaning to move through the rest of the house and make sure that there was nothing else inside which might pose a threat.

A moment later, she got her answer.

Too quickly for Heinkel to even notice, something snaked out from the shadows and struck, once. Heinkel gasped in sudden pain (Pain? No, that couldn't be right . . . could it?) and tried to jump back.

This wasn't another vampire, not another slow thug with a gun running at her in the last, useless charge of its unlife. No, this was something altogether different; that much she knew by instinct alone. Had they been in the basement, hiding behind the tangled monster? Must have been, otherwise they'd never have managed to sneak up on her like that.

Heinkel should have seen it coming – but she had been distracted by the larger monster, and this new threat wasn't what she was expecting. It hadn't even come at her with a proper weapon. No, the thing she had been struck by was – it was –

_Oh, hell,_ Heinkel thought.

A syringe was buried in the side of her neck, thin and grimy. She'd had worse stabbed through her since becoming a regenerator, but somehow, this was different. Somehow, impossibly, the shock of that little prick was enough to stop her in her tracks – and, as the narrow, bony fingers that held the syringe pushed down on the plunger, sending whatever dark liquid was contained inside rushing into her body, Heinkel felt herself go weak in the knees, reeling as the world began to spin around her.

Her grip loosened, and the guns she held in either hand clattered to the floor, suddenly dull and lifeless without the fire of a paladin behind them. Heinkel watched the arm that held the syringe pull back into the shadows, and in the few moments before she fell, she caught a glimpse of the emaciated, ruined figure that held it.

And then she was falling, only a few feet to the hard floor below, but for some reason it felt like a mile's drop, and when Heinkel finally landed the pain was enormous, exploding through her head and her back as she crashed to the floor in a heap. Worse, there was pain coming from her arms, and her chest, and one of her legs, too – places where she'd been shot by the vampires in the house. Only that sort of thing was a trifle for a regenerator like her; those wounds shouldn't hurt like that, _couldn't _hurt like that.

But they did. Heinkel cast a desperate eye to her own body, and saw to her horror that the bullet holes in her chest weren't drying up, closing over, sealing off as her body healed itself in double-time as it was meant to. No, the blood only flowed ever quicker, and the pain only grew worse with every passing moment. Heinkel tried to lift and arm from where she lay; to grab at her wounds or push herself to her feet, but she couldn't. She was paralyzed, helpless and broken as the pain she hadn't been able to feel for ten years now returned to her, eating away at her insides like fire.

There were footsteps, and then a shadow fell across Heinkel. She rolled her eyes helplessly toward the ceiling, and saw the man who had stabbed her with the syringe – who had done this impossible thing to her – standing over her paralyzed body, regarding her curiously.

The remains of the monster were still burning, and the light from the fire cast the man into dark silhouette, but Heinkel could still see some things. She could see that he was tall, and horribly thin, and that he carried a disgusting, rotting teddy bear in the crook of one arm. And . . .

And there was more. As the man approached her, Heinkel could see the hem of a coat. A _white _coat, stained with chaotic, violent streaks of blood. And she could see his hair, which was too long, and stringy, and covered in grease and grime, framing his face, which was long and gaunt. She couldn't see his eyes – couldn't see them because he was wearing spectacles, glasses that were round, like hers, but with too many lenses; hinged magnifying glasses that clung to the sides of the frames and made him look like some kind of horrible insect. Some of the lenses were cracked, or broken, but they all shone with a mad, reflective light as he looked down at Heinkel.

"_Ach__. _Bad luck after all, Paladin," the man said, in a distant, amused voice. His head jerked and twisted, suddenly, as blue sparks shot from the back of his neck – but he recovered just as fast, and then he knelt down, bringing his face close to Heinkel's and peering at her from behind those awful glasses.

He breathed out. It was a short, venting blast of air that didn't seem like real breath at all – because it was hot, very hot, and it smelled like oil and burning.

Heinkel gurgled, that being the only sound she could make, now. The man's face disturbed her, and not only because of his appearance. She felt like she should know that face, felt like she should _recognize _it, but she didn't. Wherever Heinkel's gut was telling her this man was from, he had remained unseen, hiding and creeping in the dark where he would not see the fires of battle himself.

The man spoke again, and this time, now that she was so close, Heinkel heard his voice for what it really was. She heard the dry, mechanical buzzing beneath it, heard how hollow it was, heard the tinny, fractured feedback that was the sound, not of a real voice, but of something _pretending _to be one.

"You are in bad shape, _kleiner Krieger_," the man said, voice crackling. "So much blood – and see, you can't even get up!" He laughed, dry and terrible.

Heinkel glared at him wildly; all she could do. She hated feeling this helpless, hated the terror she felt in the very fiber of her being as she stared into the bright, crooked disks of light where his eyes should have been.

"Do you know vhat I think you need, Paladin?" the man asked, chuckling. He extended a mocking hand to her, his long and skinny fingers like outstretched claws.

"I think you need . . . _Ein Doktor._"

Heinkel's vision blurred, and spun. Then, with a sensation like falling, everything simply slipped away, and her world went dark and silent.


	7. In Which the Title is Explained

The helicopters arrived, unexpectedly, just a little bit after morning tea.

There were three of them – one of the large, double-rotored military sort, and two smaller escorts – all gliding through the sky smooth as butter, while very loudly interrupting what had otherwise been an acceptably peaceful morning.

They did not improve upon Sir Integra's mood in the slightest.

She was watching them from her office, standing at the big window looking out upon the manor's courtyard as the helicopters circled her home, generally being rude, loud, and making a positive mess of the groundskeeping. All three bore the seal of Vatican Section Thirteen – hardly a surprise – and not a single one of them waited for permission to set down upon the manor lawn, thrumming and humming to a rest as their rotors slowed and the morning air grew still once more at last.

Integra briefly flirted with the thought of simply ignoring them, but decided against it. There were, after all, times when one simply couldn't risk being antisocial.

Turning from the window, Integra took a grumpy seat at her desk, mashing one of the buttons on her intercom as she did so. It was the only button with a label that wasn't in the knight's handwriting; a lable which had, in fact, been penned by a much younger hand in purple ink and which had been embellished by a smiley face and a girlish little curlicue after the second _S_.

"Seras," Integra spoke into the intercom. "Could you come upstairs? It's important."

Integra leaned back in her chair, casting a furtive glance back out the window to where the helicopters lay. Five cassock-clad men had disembarked and were now making their way steadily toward the main house.

After a long pause, a reply crackled over the desk's intercom speaker. "Sir? What's going on? Is it . . . is it important? I mean, do you really need me for this?"

Integra huffed, impatient. She almost lit a cigarillo, until she remembered that she already had one going, smoldering away in the overflowing ashtray on the corner of her desk. _Damn_, she thought. Was she really that nervous, already?

She punched the intercom button again. "It's Iscariot, Seras. Of course it's important."

"Yeah, but . . . Sir, I was _just _about to go to sleep. I'm in my pajamas! It's kind of difficult to loom menacingly over your shoulder when I'm in a bathrobe and bunny slippers, you know?"

Integra sighed. Her morning was _not _going well – and, somehow, she sensed that the rest of the day wasn't going to be especially pleasant either.

"Just get up here, Seras. And _try _to look at least _halfway _decent when you do."

Integra heard a garbled muttering from the other end of the line that sounded like something approximating acquiescence, and didn't press the matter. She knew Seras would be there, just as she knew – by instinct, or by past experience, or by some combination of both – that there could be no good reason for Section Thirteen's impromptu and stunningly arrogant visit.

Eye still on the helicopters outside, she grabbed her half-finished cigar, stood up, and headed for the door.

* * *

M'Quve squinted against the sunlight as he stepped onto the perfectly manicured grass of the Hellsing estate. He did not enjoy having to go outside so early; bright lights had been bothering him lately, and his cough was getting worse. His walk was beginning to grow unsteady, and there were deep, sunken bags developing under his eyes.

Unfortunately, however, there were more important things M'Quve had to worry about at the moment. And one of those was the reason that he was now strolling with as much confidence as he could muster toward the home of that steel-hearted knight – and the four Iscariot soldiers who walked behind him weren't doing much to aide his feelings about the situation.

As they approached the door of Hellsing manor, M'Quve saw that it was already open, and that Sir Integral was already waiting for them in the shadows beyond, glaring poison-tipped daggers at the Vatican men from behind a hazy, swirling stream of smoke.

"Sir Hellsing!" M'quve called out as his party approached. He spread his arms in mock joviality. "I trust we are not interrupting you on such a beautiful morning as this?"

"You are _always _interrupting," Integral replied. She did not move from her position in the doorway, so that M'Quve and his agents had to halt several steps from the door. " . . . But I trust that _you _have a _very _good reason to perform such an outstanding display of insolence, _especially _on today of all days."

M'Quve nodded, respectfully, but did not back down. "I am aware of what today is, Sir Hellsing – that tonight will be Walpurgis Night. That does not make me less respectful, but only more concerned. You see, Sir Hellsing – one of my agents has gone missing."

This seemed to have an effect. Integral lost a fraction of her stern appearance, though her iron frown remained steadfast. "Why . . . why should that be a concern of mine, M'Quve?"

M'Quve smiled in his lopsided way. "Because, Sir Hellsing, it is Heinkel Wolfe who has disappeared, and last I am aware, she was hunting a spy who had breached _your _security." The smile turned to a frown, matching Integral's own. "She contacted me yesterday, claiming to have found the man's residence. She said she would contact me again within two hours. It has now been over twenty-three. I have not heard from her since."

His frown deepened. "This, compounded with the rather . . . _violent _relationship our two organizations have had in the past, forces me to choose _you _as the prime suspect for Heinkel's disappearance, Sir Hellsing."

An angry jet of smoke billowed from Integral's nose. "I have done nothing of the sort, M'Quve," she growled. "Nor has any member of my organization."

"I would love to believe that, Sir Hellsing," M'Quve replied. "But I am afraid the matter stands. So, I suggest you either return my agent, or, if you truly do not have her, invite us inside and aide us in _locating _her."

For a long moment, Integral was silent. Her expression did not change, and it was impossible to tell just what she was thinking. Finally, however, she breathed out – another stream of smoke curling out into the morning air as she did so – and stepped aside, allowing M'Quve and the other Iscariot agents access to Hellsing manor.

"Well then," Integral said. "In that case, I suppose I'd best put the kettle on."

* * *

When Heinkel Wolfe awoke, the first thing she noticed was that she could move again.

Not that this really helped matters much, as she was also chained up, hands behind her back, against a cold stone wall that didn't feel as though it was going to be offering her a chance to get away anytime soon. A filthy mat was spread out on the floor beneath her, separating her from the dirtied, concrete ground, but it didn't help much. Her cassock was gone, as were her glasses and her shoes. Bandages had been wrapped tightly around her arms, and her chest, and her leg, covering up the gunshot wounds she had sustained – which, Heinkel noted with unease, were still aching and throbbing exactly the way they _shouldn't _for someone with regenerator capabilities. She grunted, quietly, in pain.

Given what she had already determined about her current circumstances, Heinkel would have assumed her surroundings to be some sort of sprawling, dimly lit dungeon basement, perhaps left over from one nasty chunk of medieval history or another. Lord knew Iscariot had plenty of those sorts of things lying around, after all.

But while "basement" seemed to be an apt enough description for where she was, Heinkel found to her surprise that there was also light – _blinding _light, light that shone through into every corner of the room, banishing every scrap of shadow there could possibly have been, glaring and piercing to the tune of the whining, grinding generator that she could hear, but could not see.

What Heinkel _could _see, however, was a mess of burned, broken crates, all half-unpacked and surrounded by all manner of broken machinery, tangled trails of electrical wiring, dusty computers and dirty medical equipment. Any manner of things a mad scientist might want to have littered the room. It was almost cartoonish, really – Heinkel half expected to see an electrical Jacob's Ladder off in the corner, and Boris Karloff lying on an operating table at the center of the room.

Instead, what she saw as she lifted her eyes was a short, disheveled man with a lot of scars and not a lot of hair worrying over a computer screen several meters from where she sat. Before he could even notice that the paladin was awake, however, something else jumped in front of Heinkel's line of sight, and she drew back, startled.

Even without her glasses, the newcomer was unmistakable.

It was, of course, the skinny man who had attacked her back at Eddie's house – the man who had rendered her paralyzed and helpless with nothing more than a single needle-prick. He wandered up to her, still carrying that disgusting, rotting teddy bear, and bent over Heinkel, examining her with a wide, excited grin.

"Ah," he crooned. "You are avake, _kleiner Krieger! Wunderkind!_ You know, vith anybody else, you might haff died from those gunshot vounds – but lucky for you, my hands never falter!" He twirled a scalpel between his fingers and favored her with a smug expression. "Vhy so quviet, Paladin? I saved your life, you know. A simple '_danke_'vould suffice."

Heinkel glared at the skinny, crooked figure with his bloodstained coat and madman's spectacles through a haze of fury and confusion. "Who the _hell _do you think you are?" she asked, spitting out the words. Talking hurt, but that didn't stop her.

The skinny man laughed. "Ah, vell, that ist the thing, _ja? _So many answers I might haff for you. Technically speaking, I am _das erste_, the First. Mein full title is _Herr Doktor Ein_, first director off _der Fuehrer's_ vepponized paranormal department und chief executor off Special Order Six-Six-Six. But since you are mein guest und ve are in polite company, you may call me _Dok_ if you like." He shrugged. "Most everyvun else does, after all."

"_That _is _Herr Doktor Drei,_" the man – Dok – continued, pointing at the shorter, scarred man, who did not look up from whatever it was he was working on. "He's a bit upset because you broke his newest pet. Vhat a mess that vas, _ja?_" Dok laughed, and Heinkel shivered as she thought back to the horrible, unnatural mess that had charged up the basement stairs at her.

Dok, however, was not quite through with introductions. He held up the limp, torn bear, and Heinkel recoiled at the stench that clung to it.

"Und this," Dok said, "is _Herr Teddybär_. I found him floating in the river, on the day that everything vas burned. He _alvays _thinks mein jokes are funny. Don't you, _Herr Teddybär?_" He held the filthy toy up to his ear, and after a moment he smiled, seemingly pleased with whatever response he imagined the bear had given.

Heinkel ground her teeth together and strained against the chains that held her fast to the wall. She didn't know who this Dok was, didn't know the first thing about him – other than the fact that he was obviously insane – but his words were not meaningless to her. Within that madman's babbling stream of nonsense there were phrases that jumped out at Heinkel like burning beacons: _Weaponized Paranormal. Special Order 666. _

_Der Fuehrer. _

Heinkel lunged forward, straining against her bonds as far as they would let her. "You," she growled, glaring furiously at Dok. "You're with the Nazis. You work for Millennium!"

Dok froze at the mention of _Millennium_, the word causing him to halt his limping step and melting the deranged smile from off of his face in a moment. He turned to look at Heinkel, the light in his eyes souring. "_Millennium _is dead, _kleiner Krieger_. Und good riddance to it, too. I haff vasted far too much off mein life on foolish men vith no vision. For madmen und demagogues und short-sighted varmongers, I haff vasted mein life. Almost, because of them, I saw mein work come to nothing vhatsoever. But I _vill_ finish mein vork." His head spasmed, even more violently this time, the resulting stream of sparks flying madly every which way. "I vill finish mein vork if it is mein final accomplishment. Und why shouldn't it be? In only a few hours, _kleiner Krieger, _you vill be witness to mein opus, mein _Meisterwerk_."

"And what is that?" Heinkel asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

"_Ach_, it is quvite simple, Paladin," Dok replied, with a chuckle. "I vill bring death to the vorld. _Schließen Sie Zerstörung ab_. Und vhen that is done, I vill raise the dry und desiccated corpses, und I shall make it _ein tote Welt_. A dead vorld. A vorld populated only by abominations, valked only by monsters und the undead, forever. Do you see, _kleiner Krieger? _It vill be Walpurgisnacht! Walpurgisnacht, vhen the dead valk the Earth!"

He grinned, and spread his arms wide. "Walpurgisnacht, forever. Walpurginacht _Eternal_."

It took all of Heinkel's energy to keep her rising temper under control. Much as she wanted to ring Dok's neck and gut him (not necessarily in that order), there was nothing she could do at the moment other than sit. And if she was going to do that, then she might as well be paying attention, like a good detective. There were, after all, questions that still needed answering. For instance: if Dok was _Herr Doktor_ _Ein _and the short, scarred man was _Herr Doktor Drei _. . .

. . . Then who was _Herr Doktor Zwei?_ And _where _was he?

But that was a question that would have to wait. She wouldn't be able to puzzle it out from her current position, after all, and what Heinkel needed now was information. So, with not a lot of options left, she decided to take a wild stab at collecting some.

"So," Heinkel said, as Dok stared sidelong at her. "What do I have to do with all of this?"

"Nothing," Dok replied, simply. For a moment it seemed like he would not elaborate, but then: "I vant you to be a vitness, Paladin. Mein _Intelligenz _should not go unappreciated, _ja? Der Vatikan _vas foolish to help us escape after the var. Greedy. Shortsighted. _Sehr dumm_, to put it simply. I vant you to see the results of those actions firsthand, _kleiner Krieger_, so you might see your vorld for vhat it truly is."

Heinkel glowered. "The priests who helped you were traitors and a disgrace to our church. I killed the last of them myself."

"Und so you clean your conscience vith their blood, _ja_," Dok tittered. "But vould _der Vatikan _dispose of something from that part of their past if it vas actually valuable to them? Off course not. Did you never stop to vonder, Paladin, just _vhere _the science for Iscariot Division's regenerators comes from? Hm?"

This caught Heinkel off guard. She froze for a moment, and had to speak slowly to keep from stammering. "That's . . . " she began, hesitantly. "That's need-to-know."

At that, Dok laughed uproariously, throwing back his head and letting loose with a hacking, wheezing sound that quickly degenerated into a round of buzzing, sparking coughs. "Aheh, aheheheh," he wheezed. "Off _course _it is need-to-know, foolish _kleiner Krieger_. So is every dirty little secret! Vhen _der Vatikan _offered us their help to escape after the var, it vas not for free – in exchange for their assistance, ve gave them a gift, a small sample of mein genius. A process that vould let a human stay human, but render them impossible to kill – the technology for _ein Regenerator!_"

"You're _lying_," Heinkel spat.

"Aheh. I assure you I am not, Paladin," Dok said. "It is a process I devised myself. Quvite simple, in fact – all it requires is the introduction off a certain type off _künstliche Haut_, off fake cells trained to repair themselves after even the slightest injury. Today you vould probably call such a thing "nanotechnology," but since this is a process I developed in der nineteen-forties, und the actual details are a tad more, how vould you say – " he shrugged " – _scientifically dubious_, I don't know vhat you vould name it exactly."

Dok leaned in close to Heinkel's face, and now he was all smiles again. This close, Heinkel could hear the buzz of electricity and the grinding, scraping sound of metal coming from under his skin.

"But vun thing I _do _know, _kleiner Krieger_," Dok said, "Is that it is a process vhich is very easy to svitch _off_."

He produced a syringe filled with dark liquid and held it in front of Heinkel's eyes.

"This is vhat I gave you before bringing you here," Dok explained. "It is _ein Gegnerbefehl_ – a sort off computer virus, you could say, but again I must varn you that is too simple off a comparison. To explain shortly, Paladin, all the artificial cells in your body vith instructions to repair injuries haff been given _new_ instructions: to do _nothing at all_."

Heinkel's breathing was heavy. She knew that she should be staying calm, should be keeping her mind level, be piecing together all of the information that she was being given into a usable whole. She should be planning her escape, figuring out how to defuse this madman's twisted plot and rid the world of a blight that should have been gone ten years ago – no, _sixty _years ago.

But she wasn't, because this was starting to become too much, even for her.

Perhaps Dok saw some of this, as his gleeful, childish expression was quickly replaced by one of grim, serious satisfaction. He had what he wanted, for now at least.

Dok straightened up again and looked at Heinkel meaningfully. "You are not a paladin anymore, _kleiner Krieger_," he said. "Not as Iscariot vishes you to be you are not. So I varn you, do not attempt anything foolish." He produced the scalpel again, and twirled it menacingly between his fingers. "Cooperate, or I vill be forced to . . . _deter_ you. Und if I cut you, _kleiner Krieger_, I promise you . . . you _vill _bleed."

* * *

M'Quve glanced uneasily from side to side as he walked down the long, wide hallway, followed by his agents and led, at a distance, by Sir Integral.

"I see you have not brought your pet with you to meet us," he said, eyes still shifting about. "Are you trying to be bold, Sir Hellsing, or is the girl simply indisposed?"

Integral glanced back, unamused. "I'd conduct a more thorough search before making such assumptions if I were you, M'Quve," she said, and pointed up.

M'Quve, startled, looked where she was pointing and saw to his surprise that Seras was, in fact, directly above him, strolling along the vaulted ceiling with a bored expression. She was dressed in what appeared to be a short leather jacket, _very _hastily pulled on overtop pajama pants and a T-shirt with a picture of a kitten on it. She did not, even upside-down, look even slightly pleased to be there.

"You know the drill," Seras said, not even bothering to look down at him. "Any funny business and your ass is mine, _et cetera_."

M'Quve, shaken, moved to Integral's side and glanced reproachfully at the knight. "Very well. So you do have your monster, after all. Don't think that will cause us any hesitation if it comes to . . . to _that_, however."

Integral smirked. "I would enjoy seeing that, M'Quve," she said. "But you needn't worry – I believe I have a very sound theory as to where your paladin may have been taken."

"What?"

Integral nodded, her face serious again. "I have reason to believe that, very soon – perhaps tonight, even – we may have to expect another attack similar to the one ten years ago. I have alerted every single one of the soldiers I employ of this, and they are armed and ready to fight at a moment's notice. But I have not informed anyone else because it is, for the most part, an unfounded hunch."

She pushed her glasses farther up her nose, nervously. "The problem is, if my suspicions are correct, where such an army would be _kept_. I have ample evidence that somewhere out there is a group of artificially maintained undead monsters – but to keep such a body of animals safe, one would require a vast amount of space, untouched at all times by both the public and the sun." She glanced upwards. "That last I realized yesterday, as I watched Seras avoiding the sunset and remembered how even she is uncomfortable with the light."

"What are you saying, Sir Hellsing?" M'Quve asked.

"I'm saying," Integral said, "That we're playing hide and seek with an army that may or may not exist. But if it _does _exist, then there is only one place it could possibly be."

M'Quve raised an eyebrow. "And where would that be, dare I ask?"

"Think of London," Integral said. "Think of all the places that are still abandoned. All the ruins where nobody ever goes. And then, M'Quve, I want you to imagine the biggest basement in all the world."

M'Quve hesitated, and then, suddenly, realization washed over him and his eyes widened. "You can't possibly mean – "

"She does," Seras said, striding across the ceiling above them. "She told me about it earlier, and it makes sense. It's what I would do, and I would know. It's like the old song goes, Bishop." Seras grinned, huge and pointy.

"There's a _world _going on Underground."

* * *

"I vant to tell you a story, _kleiner Krieger_," Dok said.

Heinkel, miserable and shivering on the floor, offered no response to this.

Dok, however, was undeterred. "I vant you to understand how it vas that I, that ve, came to be in this position today. It vas not alvays that I knew the vampire vould be the perfect creature vith vitch to ensnare the vorld und bend it to my design, after all. In fact, mein early vork vas off a very different nature entirely."

He began to root through one of the broken, rotting crates that littered the room, emerging with a faded stack of hand-drawn note and diagrams. "Vhen I began mein vork with the group of men und vomen that vould vun day become Millennium, I still did not know vhat manner of _Geschöpf_ vould please _der Fuehrer _most. Mein first encounter vith the paranormal vas not vith der vampire, you see, but vith a specimen I found deep vithin Germany's Black Forest. It vas a beast unlike anything I could possibly haff dreamed off, _kleiner Krieger_. This you must understand. It vas _ausgezeichnet! Perfekt!_"

He tossed a handful of the notes to the floor in front of Heinkel, and she raised a tired eye to the words and images they held.

"Against all odds, ve managed to capture it," Dok continued. "I studied it alvays, but _die Soldaten_ refused to go near it. They had names for the creature, you see. Stories and legends vhispered to each other since they vere _Kinder_. They called the monster I had captured _Großmann_, or _der Bediener_. Most often, however, they spoke of him as _der Schlanker Mann_. They said he vas a spirit who came after _Kinder_, to steal dreams und memories."

Heinkel, who was growing more and more uneasy every moment she listened to Dok's story, peered at the sheets of paper in front of her. On the one nearest to her, she could see a pen-and-ink sketch of what appeared to be a tall, thin man in a black suit and tie. But as she looked closer, she began to realize, with a sick feeling, that the drawing was . . . well, _wrong_. The man was _too _tall, _too _skinny to be real. His long arms hung bent in ways no human could possibly turn them, his hands were nothing more than black, pointed _things _. . .

. . . And then, the _face_. Oh, _God_, the _face_. Or rather . . .

Heinkel tried to look away, but it was no good. The notes were spread wide across the floor before her, and as her eyes left the first drawing they only managed to fall upon another. It was a sketch of the same man in the suit, only now he was _changed; _he had become even taller, even skinnier. And now instead of only two arms there were _many_, all unfolding from his back like horrible, twisted tree branches. Heinkel felt her stomach twist. Just looking at the drawings made her want to vomit.

"It vas magnificent. The most perfect being I haff ever laid eyes upon."

Dok's words startled Heinkel, and she looked away from the sheets of notes to see that he had turned his back to her, arms out, orating to an (almost) empty room.

"Off course, he vas not mine for long," Dok went on. "Such a being as that could not possibly haff been held forever, not even by the most perfect prison ever devised. He vanders free now, I don't know vhere – but vhile I had the opportunity I studied him, und I learned vhat I could. Vhen I began vork on the _letztes Bataillon_, I put a piece of vhat I had learned from him into each off the most important vampires."

Dok began counting off on his fingers. "His ability to bend ordinary things to his vill und make them his veapons, I gave to Alhambra. The vay in vhich he could pursue any target, und hunt it vherever it might hide, I gave to Van Winkle. The dreams and nightmares he could spin from thin air, those, I gifted to Zorin. But most important of all, the vay he _moved _– slipping in und out off reality, dancing betveen dimensions, straddling the line of vhat _vas _and vhat vas _not_ . . . _that_, I gave to mein own Schrödinger."

Heinkel was reeling from it all, but, as always, the detective in her mind would not let her be overcome. Overwhelmed as she was, she forced herself to concentrate on the things she was missing, the little pieces of information being lost in the storm. She tore her mind away from the creature whose image stared up at her from the papers on the floor, and said:

"Millennium . . . the vampires that burned London. _You _made them? _All _of them?"

"_Ja!_" Dok cried, his face ecstatic once more. "Mein pride und joy! There vere three off us on the project, you see – _Ein, Zwei, Drei _– but the vampires vere mine alone to create. But all the same, I vas careful. As I said, the Major vas a fool. He _vasted _mein vork on playing at soldiers, _das dumme Kind_. So I hid – even though I vas Major's favorite, I made certain alvays to stay in the shadows, out off the vay, _behind _the cameras. So that you vould never see me. So that nobody vould follow me if, perhaps, I turned out to be not _quvite _as dead as some vould think. So that vhen Major had finally fought his last var, I could remain, und vork."

He leaned forward, prodding at the faded notes spread across the floor. "Und vork I did! For as much as I admired mein perfect monster, _der Schlanker Mann_, I could only recreate him in pieces. Small tributes that I gave to mein other creations. But vonce I vas free to vork however I vished . . . I made progress. Science conquers all, _kleiner Krieger, _und vith science I haff created mein perfect child. Mein own _Schlanker Mann_, made vith mein own two hands."

Heinkel's eyes grew wide, and at her look of shock, Dok drew back, lapsing once more into his wheezing, hacking laugh. "Ahah. Heh, ha. Do not vorry so, _kleiner Krieger_. He is not _here_." Dok's face grew into a sick, malevolent grin. "Many veeks ago I put him inside a box, you see. A very _speziell _box vhich vill not open until sundown off tonight, vhich is Walpurgis Night." The grin widened.

"Und this box, I gave as _ein Geschenk_, a gift, to Section Thirteen off _der Vatikan_."

Heinkel felt the world drop out from beneath her as all of the pieces began to fit together at last.

That stupid box – the one M'Quve was obsessed with, the one Heinkel had never trusted, even from the start – lay at the root of this whole mess. Well, she thought, grimly, it seemed that tonight M'Quve would finally get his wish to see what lay inside, whether he liked it or not. She wondered if she would be able to stop it – wondered if, defeating all odds, she managed to escape from here, she would still be able to face the thing that had managed to terrify her even when it was only a drawing on a page.

Instead of thinking about it, Heinkel asked another question. "Is _that _your plan, then? To unleash this . . . this _thing _into the world?"

Dok began to move away, limping and dancing his way around the boxes and lab equipment that choked the floor of the room. "Off course it isn't, _kleiner Krieger_," he replied. "There is more inside the box than mein _Schlanker Mann_. The creature is only there to _protect _vhat is even more important – to protect the thing that vill bring about mein Walpurgisnacht Eternal at last."

"And what is that?"

Dok laughed. "You think I vould tell _you? _Aheh. Ahaheh heh. I am no _Dummkopf_, _kleiner Krieger_, und a good magician _never _reveals his secrets. Not _all _off them, at least. Ahahahheh." Whirling, slowly, he drew his bloodstained coat around his shoulders and vanished behind a particularly tall stack of boxes. "Goodbye, _kleiner Krieger_. I vill speak to you again vhen the vorld has ended."

And then he was gone.

Heinkel sighed, and sank back against the wall. There was something familiar about the old, decaying, room, but she couldn't quite place her finger on it. She felt like it would only take her a moment to figure out where she was if she could only get around the place, but as it was, Heinkel could only see a mess of boxes and cables and computers and who-knew-what sort of medical and lab equipment. She cast her eyes about what little of the room she could see – and realized, with a sudden start, that she was not alone.

No, it wasn't the other man who had been with Dok. _Herr Doktor Drei _was still far too engrossed in whatever it was he was working on to even acknowledge Heinkel's existence.

But farther along the edge of the wall, about a meter from where Heinkel herself had been chained up, a dirty, shadowy figure sat slumped behind the bars of a short, cramped cage. She hadn't noticed before because of how quiet the man was being, how still. But she saw him now, and, as quietly and discreetly as she could manage, Heinkel called out.

"Hey!" She said, in a loud whisper. "Hey! Hey, you!"

Heinkel shot a quick glance at Drei, but either he hadn't heard her or he didn't care. She looked back to the man in the cage – and saw that he was turning his head, slowly, to look back at her. Heinkel winced when she saw his face; he was even worse off than she was. He was filthy and beaten; his clothes were torn, one lens of the glasses he wore was completely broken, and a dark, cracked stream of long-since-dried blood ran down his face.

"What's going on here? Why are _you_ here?" Heinkel asked. She felt it was a legitimate question; after all, the man didn't look like a fighter. Unlike herself, Heinkel could think of few reasons why he might have been dragged down into this twisted hell.

"I . . . " the man stammered. "I had something that they wanted, I think. They came to my house, they took me . . . they got what they came after me for, I think. I'm not really sure what it was. But after that they kept me here. They . . . they're not here now, but there are . . . " he took a deep, rattling breath. "Oh, God. I don't know if you'll believe this, but some of them are _vampires_. Not the important ones, just some goons they get to do their dirty work but . . . oh . . . "

Heinkel girt her teeth. "I believe it," she said, evenly.

The man coughed, a hacking sound. Flecks of blood were on his sleeve when he removed it from his mouth. "They . . . " he moaned. "The vampires, I mean. They . . . "

Heinkel bristled. "Did they _bite _you?"

"No." The man shook his head, miserably. "No. But they took my blood. They have a pump. They . . . oh, God." He trailed off again, slouching even farther in his claustrophobic prison.

Heinkel tugged at the chains holding her back. "All right," she said, her own sheer determination taking over. "Don't give up yet. I'll get us both out of here, one way or another, I promise you that." Another yank, and then she looked back over at the broken man in his cage. "My name's Heinkel, by the way," she said, feeling terrible that it was all she could really do to help. "What's yours?"

The man looked at her. He hesitated.

Finally, though, he spoke. "It's Eddie," he said, and coughed again.

"My name is Eddie Holloway."

* * *

_Well. That was chapter seven, otherwise known as the biggest and most shameless exposition dump in this entire story. Hopefully you're (mostly) okay with that, though, since it does answer an awful lot of those nagging questions that have been popping up all over the place. There's still plenty more that need to be addressed, mind you, so don't go anywhere._

_If you haven't realized just what's inside M'Quve's box by this point, don't worry. I'm doing my best to write this in such a way that it doesn't really matter whether you recognize it or not. I do hope, however, that at least some of you have managed to puzzle it out by now. _

_My thanks to those of you who've stuck with the story this far. Next time, you can expect Seras to finally start doing exciting stuff again (Explosions imminent!) Eddie to finally return to the plot (Um, hooray? I guess?) and Sir Integra to finally decide that she should be getting in on this whole detective business (Ooh, mysterious!). Thank you again, and should you have anything to say, good or bad, I'm always listening. _


	8. Rock 'n' Roll to the Rescue

Eddie Holloway decided that the universe hated him and wanted him to suffer.

This was a conclusion he had drawn sometime between the night when he had been attacked by a giant, angry monster straight out of hell that was the size of a house and sharp as a bucket of razorblades, and the following morning, when he had been attacked by a bunch of sewer-smelling vampires who had broken into his house and caged him up somewhere underground with nobody for company but a couple of insane German scientists.

. . . It had been an eventful week to say the least.

The thing was, though, that there were certain parts of Eddie that simply wouldn't back down, no matter what happened. He didn't always enjoy this fact, especially as it meant that his mind was never as quiet as he would have liked, but there it was all the same. Specifically, it was the journalist bits of him, the little parts of his brain that tried to think of a way to turn any situation into a story, even if that situation involved near certain death without a single word processor in sight.

Or something.

The point was, even as he lay at the bottom of a cramped, rusted cage, half-starved and covered in his own filth and God-knew-what-else, listening to the thickly accented ranting of the madman who sometimes called himself _Ein_, sometimes _Dok_, something, somewhere in the back of his mind, was writing.

It was only a first draft, but it was better than nothing.

It went like this:

_I've decided that the universe hates me and wants me to suffer. _

_Now, granted, I know a lot of this was my fault. But if you're reading this then I assume that you weren't a lazy sod and didn't skip over all the bits that came before, so you should know that I wasn't about to give up my search for Hellsing based on something as silly and ridiculous as common sense. Oh no. _

_The problem was I didn't know what to expect when I actually found them. Years after I'd watched London burn, years after I realized I'd seen a dead girl that night and after spending so much time trying to find that name – Hellsing – that name that nobody was ever supposed to know about, I finally came face to face with my wildest dreams, and I couldn't see them for what they were. I thought Hellsing were monsters. _

_I wasn't wrong. But I was blind all the same._

_What I didn't realize was that there are _worse _things out there in the dark, and that _that's _why Hellsing exists. I should have realized that when they saved me from a beast, but instead I kept after the story – and so I didn't realize the truth until a bunch of monsters came and took me down to hell, or at least somewhere nearby. _

_I don't know for sure – the men who keep me here don't talk much, and when they do it's mostly in German – but I'm beginning to suspect that I'm being _used_. Thing is, I never would have actually found Hellsing in the first place if it hadn't been for an anonymous tip. I'm almost certain that tip came from these guys – this crazy "Dok" or whatever he wants to call himself – but for the life of me I can't figure out _why _he would want me to find them. _

_But I can guess. _

_See, here's the thing. I don't know a lot about Hellsing, but I probably know more than anybody directly connected to it. And unlike them, I won't be missed. Now, this Dok guy, whenever he mentions Hellsing, it sounds to me like he's got some kind of beef with them. I don't know what it is, but the important thing is – he can't remember them. _

_Oh, don't get me wrong, he knows what Hellsing is, and I'm pretty sure he can remember why he hates them so much, but somehow – I think it has something to do with how his head is always twitching like that – he's gotten foggy on the details. Details that I have. _

_That's why they came after me, I'm almost certain of it. They need what I know. _

_But they've got that now. So why am I still alive? Probably to feed those vampires Dok keeps around like pets. I don't see much of them, but they sound British . . . I think he makes them out of old transients and derelicts he picks up off the street. _

_Heh. Food for hobo vampires. What a world, eh? _

_Well, at least I won't be alone for it all. They've brought somebody else down here; a woman, I think, though she was dressed like a priest when they brought her in. Dok seems to be interested in her for some reason – another journalist like me? I'm not sure, but I think that – _

"Hey! Hey, you!"

Eddie was startled out of his inner meditations by a loud whisper coming from a meter or so away. He turned, with effort, and looked through the filth and blood coating his face at the woman they had only recently brought to join him. She was chained to the wall, and while Eddie couldn't see her face clearly – his glasses had been partially broken – he saw that there were vicious, old scars carved deep into her cheeks. She looked like a fighter; Eddie imagined that they had had a much harder time getting her down here than they had him.

"What's going on here?" The woman asked. "What are _you _doing here?"

Eddie painfully tried to effect a sitting position. Dok had just been speaking to the woman for the better part of half an hour, but it seemed he hadn't told her anything really important. Well, that was typical Dok, and no mistake.

Eddie opened his mouth to speak; his lips were caked with dried blood and his throat burned, but he did his best all the same.

"I . . . " Eddie stammered. "I had something that they wanted, I think. They came to my house, they took me . . . they got what they came after me for, I think. I'm not really sure what it was. But after that they kept me here. They . . . they're not here now, but there are . . . " he took a deep, rattling breath. "Oh, God. I don't know if you'll believe this, but some of them are _vampires_. Not the important ones, just some goons they get to do their dirty work but . . . oh . . . "

"I believe it," the woman replied, looking grim.

"They . . . " Eddie moaned. "The vampires, I mean. They . . . "

"Did they _bite _you?"

"No." Eddie shook his head. And they _hadn't_, actually, he realized, so thank God for small mercies at least. But that didn't make what they _had _done any more palatable.

"No. But they took my blood. They have a pump. They . . . oh, God." He trailed off again, slouching even farther in his claustrophobic prison.

The woman tugged at the chains holding her back. "All right," she said. "Don't give up yet. I'll get us both out of here, one way or another, I promise you that." Another yank, and then she looked back over at the broken man in his cage. "My name's Heinkel, by the way," she said, and Eddie turned the name over in his mind. Was it one he had heard before? No, no it wasn't, but for some reason he felt like he probably should have. He looked at Heinkel, and did his best to measure what sort of person she was through the fog of his own myopia.

"What's yours?" Heinkel asked.

Eddie looked at her. He hesitated.

Finally, though, he spoke. "It's Eddie," he said, and coughed again.

"My name is Eddie Holloway."

* * *

Elsewhere – though not nearly as far away as Heinkel would have guessed – a young woman wearing a dark, skinny suit and an absurdly large rifle trotted through the darkness and went looking for monsters.

Technically, Seras was alone. More accurately, she was simply getting the filth out of the way to make room for the cleanup crew that was waiting for her above ground. This was part of The Plan, which was something that Integra and M'Quve had devised together. So far it was fairly routine; after ten years Seras had become quite used to plans that began, "Send The Vampire In First."

Not that she was complaining. Those plans had a tendency to _work_, after all.

As it was, things were moving remarkably swiftly. Apparently all it took was an agent of Iscariot (and probably the rest of the world) being in danger for Integra and M'Quve to stop shouting at each other long enough to organize what amounted to a Pretty Good Plan. Those two were still at Hellsing manor, keeping in touch with contacts both organizations had across the country and watching for even the slightest hint of a disturbance – while Seras, now fully dressed in her suit and backed up by Captain Gershwin and a veritable parade of artillery-equipped trucks, ventured out to where the true source of the problem almost certainly lay.

And that was the heart of it, really. It was a genius deduction, and when Integra had brought it up Seras was amazed she hadn't thought of the notion herself. After all, since the London attacks, nobody had even _thought _of renovating the Underground train system. For ten years, it had lain completely undisturbed, completely abandoned, and absolutely, entirely dark.

In other words, the perfect place to hide an army of the undead.

And so, while Gershwin and the cavalry waited nervously in the streets above, Seras, alone except for her rifle, ventured into the dark, black stillness that lay beneath the skin of London, and hunted beasts.

As she walked along the tracks, gravel crunching beneath her shoes, the lyrics of the relevant song once again began to drift through Seras' mind – _they are march-ing a-round, down under your boots – _but she quickly pushed the thought away, instead choosing to focus upon the inky abyss that stretched out across the tracks in front of her. She saw past it, of course, her fiery-red eyes slicing through the blackness with ease, but in such a claustrophobic, narrow environment she could still only see so far.

Ahead, there was a turn, and the rails curved off past Seras' line of sight.

She hesitated for a moment, and then ventured further forward, some instinct in the back of her mind telling her to move slowly and carefully, now. She sniffed at the air, cautious, but it only smelled like London. She listened for movement, for the crunch of gravel, the rustle of clothes, the ragged, halting wheeze of something that didn't need to breathe anymore but still did out of awful habit. She gripped her rifle tightly, finger over the trigger.

Slowly, very slowly, Seras rounded the corner.

At which point the darkness exploded and the silence was broken. Violently.

Suddenly, the cramped space exploded in a flurry of violent movement. Bodies concealed behind stone and darkness emerged, fangs bared, and flung themselves shrieking and screaming toward Seras with all the speed and ferocity of wild beasts. They were British, she noted, in the few microseconds she had to spare for such thoughts. That must have been why it was difficult for her to smell them; they'd been hiding in the guts of London so long they'd even begun to smell like it.

Old, hopeless, dispossessed derelicts picked up off of the street and offered eternal life. They must have been desperate, Seras thought – and indeed, their faces were not so much angered as terrified, their shrieks and screams almost pitiful. Some of them had guns, but they were _old _guns, _useless _guns. Rusted, broken German rifles that they held incorrectly in trembling hands.

This wasn't an army. This was cannon fodder. A sacrifice. In other circumstances, Seras would likely have taken pity on them. But she was in a hurry, and her temper was rising, and she had plenty of bullets to spare.

And these were monsters, who'd already made their choice. They'd just be learning the consequences sooner rather than later, was all.

The roar of Seras' rifle drowned out even the bloodcurdling death-screams of the attacking vampires, the bright gunshots lighting up the darkness in fiery lightning-bursts. Seras ran forward, instincts taking over, charging through the hail of bullets and blood and twisted, messy, falling things that had once been bodies. Some of the other vampires actually managed to get their guns to fire, and Seras felt the searing burn of the bullets as they tore through her flesh.

She'd come prepared, though, drinking her fill of blood and then some before so much as entering the tunnels. The wounds closed over effortlessly, little drops of Seras' blood flying from her skin and mixing with the gushing waves of her enemies'.

In less than a minute, it was done.

Seras trotted to a halt, relaxing her grip on her rifle as it fell silent. Behind her, the skin and dust and guts of the other vampires fell to the ground and littered the tracks. Some of the biggest bits were on fire, and they lit the tunnel with a wavering, flickering light.

And at the far end of the tunnel, something else was coming.

This was, unfortunately, not a surprise.

After all, Seras knew that if there really was an army being maintained under here, it was going to be something a lot bigger and nastier than some hastily vampirized gutter-dwellers. And, having already experienced first hand just _what_ that bigger threat might be, Seras had come into the tunnels fully prepared to meet another monster like the one she had fought in the rain only two weeks before.

What came charging and shrieking toward her from the far end of the tunnel was not quite the same as that nightmare beast, but Seras quickly realized that it was, in fact, something that had the potential to be just as bad, if not worse. It was not _a _monster this time, but _monsters_, _plural_. They were almost certainly the same type of engineered, genetically stitched-together monstrosity as the beast from the night of the rainstorm, but smaller, as though they were children. Where the beast had been almost the size of a house, these snapping, snarling things were each no bigger than a large dog.

There were, however, quite a _lot _of them.

Seras hefted her rifle once more and began to fire into the oncoming storm of tooth and claw. There had to be at least three dozen of the things crowding through the tunnel, their cries echoing through the narrow walls of the London Underground and mixing together into a maddening, terrifying din. It was nearly unbearable, especially to the young vampire's sensitive hearing, but Seras couldn't let it distract her. She was Working now, and Work was serious business. No time for weaknesses, only time for doing what she did best.

Seras' red stare remained unfaltering, and her aim remained true. Every bullet she sent into the stampede of beasts had a mark, and each one found it. The bullets ripped and burned through the beasts' flesh; many were crippled and wounded, and some even fell dead, only to be trampled underfoot by the rest of the horde. These monsters were smaller, weaker than the enormous thing Seras had fought before, and they died so much more easily as a result.

The only problem was that there were so many of them, and how fast and unrelenting they all were. Before Seras had even reached the bottom of her magazine, the monsters were upon her, clawing and biting and gnashing, overwhelming the girl by sheer force of number. Seras was knocked off of her feet and buried under a frenzied swarm of scales and eager teeth. She could feel her flesh and limbs being ripped asunder, could hear her bones cracking and breaking, could feel the blood gushing from her skin.

It hurt. It hurt quite a bit, actually, but Seras did her best to ignore that little detail, because she was still Working, and because this was certainly not the time to panic, despite how things might seem. Seras did have the capacity to be a forward-thinking sort of person sometimes, and had, in fact, prepared a contingency plan for use in the event of just this sort of situation.

The plan involved a bandolier of grenades that she was wearing under her suit.

Reaching into her jacket, Seras felt for what was there, gripped hard with the few fingers she had left, and pulled.

There was a thunderous roar, and a light blossomed in the darkness.

* * *

Something sizzled.

It was the sound of a burned and dying cigar, being laid to rest in an ashen pile of its fellows.

Sir Integra was trying, really trying, not to be nervous, but this was proving difficult. She was, at the very least, doing a passable job of not letting it show, which was quite impressive considering that she was stuck in her own house, limited to remotely directing Captain Gershwin and his men from the radio and only hoping that Seras would be doing all right.

The group of Catholics who had casually invaded her office weren't really helping matters, either.

For the most part they stayed separate, M'Quve and his men standing patiently by as Integra grappled with the radio and kept her suspicious eye on them from afar. But they were still there, and it set her on edge; enough, at least, to be going through her supply of cigarillos faster than she ever had before. What she _really _needed, Integra thought, as she pulled her last box out from her desk, was a deeper tobacco drawer.

Ah, well.

Integra's fresh cigarillo sparked and flared into life against the flame of her desktop lighter (a gift from Seras; it was shaped like a miniature artillery shell). As she drew from it, Integra glanced up to see that M'Quve had risen from his seat, and was approaching her with his lilting, crooked walk. She sighed, and frowned, and stood up to meet him.

"Are things going well, Sir Hellsing?" he asked, seeming to suppress an unwanted cough as he did so. "The suspense was beginning to bother me, you understand, and I simply had to know whether your men were all right."

He favored her with a wide, oily smile. Integra did not return it.

"Nothing out of the ordinary yet, Bishop," she said. "Gershwin has assembled a perimeter around the accessible portions of the Underground. Seras has been sent in to clear out any initial threats that might be found there. So far I've heard nothing from Captain Gershwin to indicate that things aren't going according to plan."

"Excellent, excellent!" M'Quve, still smiling, began to circle about Integra's desk, wandering, slowly, in the direction of the wide window that looked out over the manor's grounds, and the Iscariot helicopters that now rested there.

"I was hoping you would say that," M'Quve said. "You see, Sir Hellsing, there is something I would like your help with – a little Iscariot secret I'm willing to let you in on in return for your being so cooperative and helpful to us."

He was staring intently out the window now, and Integra, curious in spite of herself, was unable to resist joining him. She drew up beside the pale, angular man, and followed his gaze to the grounds below.

Outside, a new group of Iscariot agents was emerging from the largest of the three helicopters. They were moving toward the manor – and between themselves, were carrying what appeared to be an enormous wooden box. It was the size and shape of a large crate, but seemed to be made of a solid piece of finished, oiled wood. Every inch was covered in flowing, carved designs, and the most prominent of these was the one on the lid; a circle, struck through in the center by a wide X.

Integra, awed by the box for no good reason she could think of, found it almost impossible to take her eye off of it.

Eventually, however, she managed, and turned to stare at M'Quve, her impatient expression demanding an explanation.

"It is . . . a relic," M'Quve began, speaking carefully. "Section Three, Matthew, gave it to us some weeks ago, hoping we might be able to unlock the secret of just what it is. But we have tried everything, Sir Hellsing, we have not been able to so much as _open _it – not without damaging it, anyway, and of course bringing harm to a relic is something we would avoid at all costs."

Smoke curled from Integra's nose. "You want me to see if I can get it open, then."

M'Quve nodded. "More or less. I know it seems strange, Sir Hellsing, but I . . . I have a _need _to know what is inside this box. I couldn't possibly explain it, but it is strong enough that I am willing to let you share the secret of its contents, one monster-hunter to another, if you can help me unlock it. So, what do you say?"

Integra huffed. She glanced out the window at the approaching box, considered it, and then turned her gaze back to M'Quve.

"I'll see what I can do."

* * *

Eddie Holloway had decided the universe hated him and wanted him to suffer _more_.

This was mainly due to the violent Catholic woman who had reacted rather poorly to him telling her what his name was, and had at this point only refrained from killing him because she was chained to the wall.

He'd done his best to explain his situation to Heinkel, which wasn't easy considering how often she interrupted him with yelling and trying to throttle him (which, fortunately for Eddie, turned out to be difficult for people with their arms chained behind them) and other various threats to his well being. Eventually, though, he had managed to get his story across, and Heinkel, who was either beginning to see reason or was just tired out from all the shouting and struggling, had quieted down and restricted herself to simply glaring at Eddie with a look of pure vehemence.

"You realize," Heinkel growled at him, "That this entire mess is your fault."

Eddie sighed, defeated. "Actually, it's only _mostly _my fault," he said. "But I can understand where you're coming from."

"I highly doubt _that_," Heinkel said, still looking angry. "But for the moment I need to be practical. You've been here longer than I have. Do you know what they're trying to do? All Dok will tell me is that he's trying to make a 'dead world,' whatever that means."

Eddie shrugged, miserably. "You know more than me, then. They stopped really talking to me once they got everything I knew about Hellsing. Dok and, and the other one, _Drei_, I can hear them talking to each other a lot, but I don't understand any of it. It's mostly in German, is the thing."

Heinkel's considered this. "Can you remember any of what you've heard? Words they use a lot, that sort of thing."

"But – "

"I speak German," Heinkel said, glancing about conspiratorially. "Fluently. But I don't think they realize that. So tell me what you've heard."

"Well – " Eddie faltered, clawing through the depths of his memory for something he could say. He was supposed to be a _journalist_, damn it. He wasn't going to let himself die for not remembering his facts properly. That would be the ultimate insult. "The short one, Drei. He keeps talking about his _Kinder _like it's a big deal or something. I know that word – it means, like, children, right?"

Heinkel nodded, thoughtfully. "Right. He could mean the vampires, but I don't think that's it. When I was in your house there was a . . . a _thing_. Dok called it one of Drei's pets. That could mean there are more – hell, that's probably the sort of monster Seras was talking about when I saw her, or something like it."

Eddie boggled. "Wait, _Seras_? How do you – "

Heinkel ignored him. "So he's got an army of _things _that this Drei goon dreamed up for him. That's not unreasonable. But it doesn't explain this 'Walpurgisnacht Eternal' rubbish. He said he wanted to make the world _undead_, not crush it outright."

"Well, uh." Eddie was struggling for something, anything useful. "Whenever they're having that conversation, Dok always calls the, uh, the monsters certain words. Drei doesn't like it, but it never really sounds like they're contradicting each other. He calls them, um, _Pestratte_."

"What? But that doesn't make any sense. Why would he be talking about – "

"And, uh, _Krankheit_," Eddie added. "That's what Dok always gets worked up about. _Mikrobe. Krankheit. _It's all he ever talks to Drei about."

"_Krankheit_," Heinkel mused. "A sickness. So what connection does – oh." Sudden realization seemed to dawn on her face. Eddie, suddenly even more frightened then she was when Heinkel was trying to kill him, drew back in apprehension as the color drained from her face and her eyes widened in horror.

"Oh, no," she said quietly, to nobody in particular. "Oh, God, no."

"What is it?" Eddie asked, desperate. "What does it mean?"

"It means – " Heinkel sighed, and looked at him, wearily. "Look, Eddie, this is just a guess, all right? But I'm good at guessing. The only sickness he could possibly be talking about is _vampirism_."

Eddie looked incredulous. "Being a vampire is a disease?"

"Sort of." Heinkel drew another deep breath. "I work with people who, uh . . . who've been _studying _the condition for some time now. There's a deeper science to it all then you might guess. Sure, there's a mystical side to it all – mainly to do with, uh, the extent of your carnal knowledge – but basically, vampirism is caused by a, a sort of microscopic parasite. Only it works by mutualism; the sickness changes you so it can live inside your body, but at the same time it gives you strength, eternal life, powers you'd never have dreamed of. Very Faustian as far as diseases go, actually."

"And I take it there's no cure," Eddie said, wryly.

Heinkel shook her head. "Short of a silver bullet to the heart? No. But it's very limited. It can only be transmitted by blood, and bites, that sort of thing. Only . . . only if Dok is doing what I think he's doing, that might not be the case any longer. Eddie, I think he's worked out some way to make vampirism an _airborne _disease. If he did that, it would spread across the world in no time, _especially _if he had an army of monsters for his plague rats."

Now it was Eddie's turn to look terrified. He wondered, idly, if there were any other horrors the universe felt like dropping on him that day, but decided, quickly, that it was better if he didn't push his luck.

"Oh, hell," Eddie said. "He can't _possibly _– "

"He _can_," Heinkel said, "But he _won't_. I'd die before I let it happen, and even then I'd die disgraced. He won't go through with it. I won't let him."

Her breath heaved, angrily, and Eddie cringed even further as he saw her eyes begin to burn with determination.

"I'm going to stop him," Heinkel said. "I'm going to stop him no matter what it takes."

* * *

_Some important words with News in them:_

_Unfortunately, I'm afraid that's going to be it for a little while. No, it's okay, I know exactly where the plot is going. The problem is, come the end of this month all of my free time will vanish and, tragically, I shall have to go back to actually having A Life for a while. Woe is me, eh? _

_No, I'm not abandoning this. Once again I assure you that I will always finish what I start, no matter what. I don't care _how_ long it takes, this story is going to reach its ending, one way or another. This is just a little pause. Call it a mid-season break. And really, it shouldn't be that long of a wait – not counting a very brief epilogue, there's really only about three or four chapters left in this thing anyway. _

_But oh, what chapters they shall be! Just what, I ask, will those of you patient enough to stick around for the ending receive as your reward? Well, I'll tell you. _

_In the upcoming chapters, you can look forward to: Integra with a sword. M'Quve with massive head trauma. Heinkel with a gun. Seras with a cell phone. Eddie with a newfound fear of flying. A certain man from France. A certain man in a red coat. Herr Doktor Zwei (whoever the hell _he _is). Der Schlanke Mann (gosh, I wonder what that means in English?). Lots of shooting. The number-one problem with fighting in a basement. And the single most violent application of the Eskimo Song, ever. _

_. . . There's more than that, of course, but if I told you everything you'd have no reason to come back. So, thank you immensely for your patronage thus far; comments, criticism, wild speculation, and anything else that lets me know how I'm doing with this mess of a story and how I could make it better are always appreciated. _

_A very good evening to you all, and I'll see you when I get back. _


	9. Doing Stuff and Breaking Things

_There, see? I told you we'd be back up and running eventually. Apologies again for the wait - fortunately, there's not much longer to go, now.

* * *

_

A second after it had bloomed, the light from the explosion swallowed itself up and vanished, leaving the Underground tunnels dark once more. The monsters, devoured by shock and flame, screamed, loudly, as they were torn apart.

The tunnels became quiet again.

It was all a burning, boiling, smoking mess. Piles of twisted corpses lay atop one another, some breathing out their last as whatever life they'd been given spilled onto the dusty ground and soaked in there. Spots of flame cast shadows across the darkened tunnels, and bits of ash and smoke that had been bone and claw and skin only moments ago drifted through the feeble light.

In the middle of it all, a young woman in a suit, flattened into the ground and utterly broken. A moment passed, and then Seras Victoria rolled over and managed to push herself to her knees.

There wasn't that much left of her, but that problem was already busy fixing itself. Blood swam through the air toward her, new skin wrapped itself around her burned flesh, and muscles and bone re-grew themselves underneath the shredded tatters of her suit. Weakly, Seras brought a hand that was still regaining most of its fingers to her face and touched it. Her nose was straightening out, her cheeks knitting themselves back together. Her jaw felt loose, and after prodding it she found that this was because it was hanging lopsided, broken and useless. The muscles strained beneath her skin, trying to connect themselves back together.

She tried to speak. "Huhhh . . . . Hit . . . Hich, hich-hooayyy . . . "

Without her tongue, this proved difficult. Seras stood up, her legs still shaky. She grabbed her jaw and pushed it back into its proper place, waggling it with relief as the skin connected and began to tighten. She began to walk, and her feet dragged through the gravel by the tracks.

"Sitchyoo-ayy . . . " Seras coughed. Flecks of blood landed on her arm, stayed there for a moment, and then slithered back up her skin, crawling up her chin and slipping back through the corners of her mouth.

"Sitchyoo-ayyshun _aaayy_," Seras drawled, as her tongue slowly began to fill up her mouth again. "Situation A. Ruh, ruhleee, r-releasing Control Art." She coughed again. "Releasing Control Art to level three. L-level two . . . " Another cough. Her walk was steady, now, and strong.

"Level one."

She was mended, now. She stood up straight, and was whole again. Seras could feel her insides burning, and her eyes lit up the darkness. The shadows bent behind her, and she broke into a run, barreling straight toward whatever awaited her at the end of the tunnel. She clenched her teeth, and they were sharp, almost as sharp as they could possibly be.

"No mercy," she said to herself, as she ran. "No mercy, no mercy, _nomercynomercynomercyno_ . . . "

And then the light was gone.

* * *

Integra Hellsing, by her own admission, was not a fan of puzzles. This one, however, captured her interest completely.

The box sat in the middle of her office, a great big cold magnetic _thing_. It did nothing, and it offered no hints. It just sat there, quietly, with its myriad carvings flowing across the wood surfaces like ripples in a lake. There was no reason it should be of interest to anybody in the room. Integra and M'Quve had spent the past hour doing nothing but stare at it, tracing slow, spiraling circles around the edge.

"Is there a seam?"

"A hairline, at the top. Nut nothing we can wedge open."

Integra scratched her head. "All right. Well, maybe the carvings have something to do with it. Have you figured out what any of them mean?"

M'Quve shook his head. "Trust me, Sir Hellsing, we have tried everything. The carvings are meaningless, or at least they offer no clues. I suppose you could discern a little from them, though. The mark on the top is an Irish Cross, of course, and the many hands can probably be connected to imagery of – "

Integra cut him off. "Are you sure about that? The cross bit, I mean."

"Of course. What _else _could it be?"

Integra took a step closer to the box and ran a hand across the top of it. The carving there, the circle and its cross, stared back at her. It was the deepest carving on the box, and the largest, as well. Unlike the sides, where images blurred together and melted into one another, the mark on the top was completely uninterrupted. Integra slid her fingers through the grooves. There was something there. She could feel it, crackling through her fingertips. As for what it _was_ . . .

She took a breath. "Well, it's just . . . the placement is odd. See how the lines are done? The ends of the cross should be perpendicular with the sides. But instead its at an angle, so they match up with the corners. It doesn't look like a cross so much as . . . well." Integra crossed the room to her desk, pulling a sheet of paper and a pen out from the clutter. Quickly, she made a mark on the sheet: a scribbly, uneven circle with a violent "X" mark through the middle.

She held it up. "I think . . . I'm not sure, M'Quve, but I think I've seen this mark before. The Round Table sent me something a few months ago. I barely paid attention to it – it was just a mark of interest, a memo, something about a few connected sightings in different parts of the United States. Mostly internet rumors, something to do with a college film student. I wrote it off as a hoax. But that mark – "

" . . . Most likely _is _an Irish Cross, as M'Quve surmises. I don't think you should stray too far from the clues you've been offered, Sir Hellsing."

Integra looked up. It was one of the men who'd come in with M'Quve that interrupted her. He wasn't Iscariot, though, but a blond, well-groomed man in a cassock with a Roman numeral three emblazoned on the shoulder.

Integra raised an eyebrow. "Ah. The section three agent. I'd almost forgotten about you. And what makes _you_ the expert? I understood the entire reason you dropped this thing off with M'Quve's crowd was because you couldn't figure it out for yourself."

"Well, yes." The man fidgeted. "But, you see, section three – Matthew – only deals with _holy _relics. Because of that, I believe M'Quve's assumption is likely more probable than your own."

Integra didn't respond, though she continued to stare at the young man. He continued to fidget, nervously. The temperature in the room dropped by a degree. He coughed.

"Um, Brother Kästner, by the way. A, um, pleasure to meet you, Sir Hellsing."

"Charmed," the knight replied, without expression. "Kästner, is it? You're German, then."

More fidgeting. "Only my family, Sir. We've been native to Europe for a few generations, now."

"I see. How many generations, exactly?"

"Um. Three, I think. Why is this so important to you, Sir Hellsing?"

"Three, did you say?"

"Yes." Kästner held up a thumb and two fingers. "_Three_. Why is it that you want to know?"

Integra didn't answer him. Instead, she crossed over the floor, heading toward the door, where Kästner stood. As she passed the box, she ran her hand over its surface again. Yes, she thought to herself as she moved past it. There was something there. Something dark, and clinging, that fed off of the thoughts and attention people gave to it. Starving and hungry in the worst way. Voracious. Single-minded. Possessive.

Manipulative.

The feeling was faint, and nobody could be blamed for not noticing it – nobody, that is, except for someone who'd kept a presence almost exactly like it as a veritable _house pet_ for over twenty years. Integra grimaced. She didn't know what was inside that box, but whatever it was, she didn't like it in the slightest.

She closed the gap between herself and Brother Kästner. They were standing next to the front door, directly beside an oversized umbrella stand. Without a word, Integra stared into the young man's eyes.

He shrank back from her, back to the wooden door. "Sir Hellsing? Would you please explain yourself?"

Briefly, Integra glanced back at M'Quve. He seemed confused as well, and apprehensive, but he wasn't moving to stop her. She turned back to Kästner.

"Brother Kästner?"

"Yes, Sir Hellsing?"

Integra's eye narrowed. "You're _lying _to me."

* * *

Heinkel's wrists were chafed and bloody. So were her knuckles. So were her elbows where she'd had to brace herself against the floor. But it wasn't wasted effort, because now, while Dok and Drei were off in the shadows and dealing in dark designs, she was free of her chains. Slipping her wrists through the restraints had come with a price – she still couldn't regenerate, after all – but Heinkel was angry, and when she was angry she got priorities.

Sharp things and revenge tended to get priority over personal pain.

Heinkel rubbed her wrists. "Father Anderson always said I was rubbish at escape work. I suppose I can't say he was wrong about that. Though Yumi was only better at it than me because she favored the more, uh, _Gordian _approach to things . . . "

Eddie Holloway looked up at her from his cage in the corner. "Who's . . . ? Oh, you know what, never mind. I've asked enough questions already. Now, would you hurry up and _do _something? It feels like you've been trying to escape from there for _months_."

"Oh, _shut up_, would you?" Heinkel crossed to one of the moldy, broken crates that littered the floor and began to root through its contents. "You're positively insufferable. This would all be so much easier if they'd just eaten you from the start."

"Hey!"

"Oh, you know it's true. Now where did they put my _stuff_?" Heinkel continued searching through the crates for another moment, gave up, and pulled out a handful of rusty surgical blades. That would have to do, she sup[posed, twirling a scalpel through her fingers. She prodded her fingertip with the blade to test it. She was business-Heinkel now, priorities-Heinkel, but that didn't mean she couldn't still enjoy her job just a little bit. She swung the scalpel through the air and imagined cutting down Dok with it.

The irony, at least, was not lost on her.

She took a step forward – and then stumbled, as the entire room shook with the shock of an explosion. Heinkel whirled – she could see where she was, now that she was standing up and the crates weren't blocking her vision: a tube station, with Dok's entire operation sprawling across the platform and his electrical generator for the blinding array of lamps squatting down on the tracks. The sound of the explosion had come from further down the tunnel, echoing out of that deep, inky abyss.

The walls shook. Bits of rubble tumbled from the ceiling. Immediately, shouts came from the far end of the room: Dok and Drei, the one following the other as they ran to the tunnel mouth.

"_Scheiße, Scheiße, Scheiße!_" Drei screamed, running as quickly as his diminutive height would allow. "She has gotten _through! _I sent to her efferythhink and she has gotten _through!" _

Dok stood stock still behind him. No stumbling now, no jerking neck or flying sparks. He simply stood, his bloodied coat hanging stiffly from his shoulders and _Herr Teddybär _clutched tightly under one arm.

"I suspected this vould happen," Dok muttered. The multiple, splayed lenses of his glasses shone in the light. "But not this soon. It seems ve shall have to move our schedule _up _by a few hours, _ja?_"

Drei rung his hands in a panic. Tears rolled out of the corners of his eyes and twisted their way down his scarred face. "But – but – _das Mädchen. Das Vampirsmädchen_. She iss comink. She vhill kill us both!"

"If you are so _vorried _about the problem, _Drei_, then I suggest _you _deal vith it," Dok snarled. "_Some _of us haff _vork _to be doing." He reached out, and shoved the shorter man off of the platform. Drei fell to the tracks below with a shrieking wail, crumpling hard as he met the steel rails. Something crunched. He didn't move.

Dok twitched to one side, and brought his face around to meet Heinkel's as she watched the entire grim scene unfold. "_Probleme und mehr Probleme_," Dok muttered, as he took a lurching step toward her. "Are _you _how they managed to find this place? It doesn't matter iff you are. She is coming soon, und I vill not haff any interruptions vhile I activate mein masterpiece." He produced his own scalpel. "Hold still und be a good _kleiner Krieger_, vill you? You hardly even know how to _use _that thing, _faules Kind_."

Heinkel held up her rusted weapon. She let her teeth show. "Not a chance, Dok," she said. "I know who's coming – my day just got a _whole _lot better."

Dok shrugged. "So be it, then." He lunged, and Heinkel did the same. The air shrieked as their blades cut through it. Somewhere, further back, Eddie whimpered and tried to crawl even deeper into the corners of his cage.

They moved around each other, one, two, step, slice. It had been ten years, but Heinkel still had no trouble finding her old rhythm. The stance, the fighting style she'd used when she _wasn't _invincible. When the next few seconds and her entire life depended on nothing more than how she moved and how she used the short, pointy thing clutched in her hand.

Heinkel ducked a swing. "You're planning to make vampirism _airborne_, aren't you?" she called to Dok. "A plague. _That's _how you're going to spread it across the whole world. With those big monsters to carry it."

"Very astute, _kleiner Krieger_," Dok said. He tilted to one side, missing Heinkel's slice with a jerky trip. "But you forget vun element! _Der Kasten, kleiner Krieger! _The box vhich I sent to Iscariot!"

Heinkel grimaced. She threw a stack of crates to the ground, letting their smashed insides block the space between herself and Dok for a fleeting moment. "I don't see what _that _has to do with _anything._"

Dok grinned. "Off course you don't. You think like a detective, not a scientist. _Der Kasten _is a transmitter. My plague, my masterpiece, it is the same as the regenerator process I designed." He pulled a syringe from his coat, the same one that had taken Heinkel's regeneration away from her. "My plague can be sent signals. Radio waves. But don't you see, _kleiner Krieger?_ Your problem now is that you don't know. You don't know vhether the plague is dormant _now _und I must activate it, or if I haff _already _activated it, und I am the only vun who can stop it."

Dok cackled. He stood still, and spread his arms wide. "_Sie verlieren, kleiner Krieger_. Kill me if you vish – but know that the fate of the vorld might be gambled avay in your decision."

Heinkel hesitated. It was only for a moment, but her guard was down. In that second, Dok leaned forward, and lunged his scalpel into Heinkel's arm. She dropped her own, and fell to the ground.

Dok ran to the far end of the platform. He paused, momentarily, at one of the computer terminals, fingers a blur across the keys. "Mein army off monsters vill avaken," he said, casting a lopsided glance back Heinkel's way. "Mein plague will spread. There vill be Walpurgisnacht Eternal. I do not believe you can stop me now." There was another rumble. Dok straightened. "You see? They wake, from vhere I have hidden them in the river. All it takes is the proper signal. The beasts march."

Still holding _Herr Teddybär_, Dok jumped to the tracks below, scampering off into the darkness in the opposite direction from Seras' imminent approach. "_Auf Wiedersehen, keliner Krieger,_" he called back, and his voice echoed. "I vill see you in the new vorld!"

Heinkel watched him go, helplessly clutching at the wound in her arm. Blood dripped around her fingertips. Around her, the walls shook. At the opposite tunnel mouth, a screaming fury of blood and shadow burst forth, flooding into the station.

Seras had arrived at last.

* * *

"I don't know what you're talking about, Sir Hellsing," Brother Kästner said.

"You're not from the Vatican at all," Integra said, still staring at the young man. "Are you?"

Kästner hesitated – then he sprang to the side and away from the door. In another moment his hand was in and out of his cassock, a stubby pistol held in it. It still wasn't fast enough, though. Integra moved after him, grabbing at the umbrella stand next to the door as she did so.

One of the umbrellas wasn't. Integra swung the sword up, pulled it back, and brought it down again, all in the time it took Kästner to brandish his small pistol. The man was thrown back against the wall. The sword, sharp and gleaming, had gone straight through him, pinning him to the wall like some enormous collected butterfly. Kästner screamed. A ball of sparks erupted from his chest where Integra had stabbed him, and a rush of air that smelled like burning oil poured from his mouth. Smoke wafted off of his clothes, as the fabric burned and smouldered.

M'Quve started forward. "Sir Hellsing! How did you – "

"Yellow eyes," Integra said, simply. She pointed to Kästner's contorted face. "I've only seen eyes that _exact color _once before, and it's not an experience I care to remember. And if that wasn't enough – " she held up a thumb and two fingers – "you used the wrong three, Kästner, for someone who claims not to have been raised German." She allowed herself a dry chuckle. "And here I thought Seras was being irrational when she made me watch that movie so many times."

M'Quve marched up to the burning, twitching mechanical man. "Who are you, Kästner? Tell me the truth."

Kästner burbled. Sparks danced inside his mouth. "I am-Am-Aaaaa . . . " He coughed. "I am Herr, H-Herr, H-H-Ha hahaha H-_Herr Doktor Zwei_. Of the _letztes Bataillon_."

M'Quve took a step back. "_Zwei? _As in 'two'?"

"Of course, Bishop! Did you really think the science behind the _letztes Bataillon _was a one-man job? There were three of us. _Ein, Zwei, Drei_. Ein, he was the Major's favorite. Liked to be called _Dok_, _ja?_ He was the one who figured out how to make the artificial vampires. Drei was our biologist. Everyone thought he was so special because he'd captured that werewolf and trained it, but the man was pathetic!"

Integra gripped the sword's hilt and twisted it. "Get to the _point_, Kästner."

"But _I_ – _Zwei!_ – When the Major was in Russia, when he was bleeding and dying from the Soviet bullets and he would not let himself be taken by the dark forces? _I _was the one who saved him, and built a metal body to keep his will inside of."

Kästner laughed. "I made one for Dok, too. And myself, obviously. Drei didn't want one – he had other means of keeping himself alive. But they are so handy! It's how we kept our youth. It's how we survived the flames of the zeppelin, too, though Dok didn't exactly come out of it unscathed. It damaged his memory circuits, you see."

Integra pushed the sword in farther. "You're rambling again. What's inside the box?"

"The box?" Kästner laughed again. "That is a secret, Sir Hellsing. But you'll never find out what the answer is – there's a monster inside to guard it, you see. And I don't think even you are strong enough to slay it." He belched another fountain of sparks, and then, with a final mad giggle, the sulfur light in his eyes went dark. His body slumped, and was still.

Integra turned away from the smoking frame. "We've been compromised, M'Quve," she said. "Now what?"

* * *

Drei stared into the face of death and wilted.

The light was already going from his eyes. He'd been dying since he fell, since he'd been pushed. A bad angle to fall on the tracks, and bad luck in general. The last thing he saw as he faded was the burning woman, Dracula's blood, coming for him out of the darkness of the tunnel beyond. He whimpered, and died, just as the girl charged into the light and the claws of darkness wrapped around his limbs. The shadows picked him up and threw what was left of the man, bodily, back onto the train platform.

Seras ignored the man's body. She walked into the station surrounded by fire and shadow. She slowed, as she stepped into the blinding light of all those lamps, and stopped, confusion on her face with the sudden lack of monsters to kill. The holes in her suit were patched with the same oozing, angular shadows that poured out of her sleeve and her ruined arm. Embers dotted her hair. Blood dripped from everywhere, and her eyes glowed.

Heinkel hauled herself to her feet and stumbled over to the young vampire. "Seras! What the _hell _are you doing here? How'd you find this place?"

"No mercy," Seras muttered. She was having trouble holding herself up. Her body leaned off-balance, supported by arms of shadow. "No mercy, no mercy. H-Heinkel? Is that you?"

"Ah, God." Heinkel put her good hand on Seras' shoulder and pushed her into a kneeling position. "You don't look so good. What did they do to you?"

Seras shook her head. "Too much blood. And fire. And hurt. No mercy." She coughed. The blood didn't even make it to the ground before it was pulled back, on invisible threads, to the corners of her mouth. "I don't . . . you have no idea how hard it is to keep control of all of this, Heinkel. I just killed an army without thinking about it. No mercy. I didn't even have to _try_ . . . "

Heinkel was doing her best not to panic. She grunted, and put both of her hands on Seras' arms, ignoring the throbbing, draining pain coming from the scalpel still jutting from her skin. "Seras, come on. We're not there yet. The world's almost saved, but not quite. There's one more monster I need you to fight. Please, you _have _to stay with us for that long."

Seras didn't look up. "It's like before, Heinkel. Before-before, I mean. You weren't there. I had to kill them, they were dead and rotting and still wearing their Hellsing uniforms, but I had to kill them and I just lost control . . . "

"Focus, Seras. You're not making any sense."

"It's like then, only it's getting harder and harder to pull myself out of it." The girl looked up at Heinkel, finally. Her eyes were still on fire, but there was terror in them. "I don't know what to _do_. Help me. Please. No mercy. It's . . . I think it has something to do with my Control Art." She rubbed a shadowy finger against the sigil on her right hand. "It messes with my head. No _wonder _Master went crazy. No mercy . . . "

"Seras."

"No mercy. It's like a big nail in my mind, and I just need to pull it _out_. I can't focus otherwise. If I could focus I'd get a handle on this. Heinkel, _please_. No mercy."

Heinkel stood up. Seras stayed on the ground, the shadows pooling around her and trembling. It was taking all of her effort to keep them in check, Heinkel could tell. Heinkel wondered if Seras ever realized the biggest reason she'd allowed them to to become friends. That for everything she'd been taught, and studied, and could see for herself . . . the vampire wasn't all that different. Wasn't all that different from someone else Heinkel had known, who was good and kind and wonderful, until it was time to fight. And then that person went away, and . . .

She shook her head.

Priorities.

Heinkel left Seras and ran to Eddie's cage. The lock came off with a few solid kicks. Heinkel tore the door open and hauled the filthy reporter out into open space. He cried out as his limbs stretched properly for the first time in days, but Heinkel ignored the complaint.

"Help me look through these boxes," Heinkel said. "They must have put my stuff _somewhere_. I need my phone. And my guns, if you can find those, too."

Eddie nodded, and begrudgingly set off to do as he was told. Heinkel began to tear through the crates one after another, ignoring the pain in her arm, growing more and more panicked with every passing moment. Where the hell was her stuff? She could solve this problem in less than a minute if she had it.

"Come _on!_" Heinkel threw another crate aside in frustration. Broken medical equipment smashed to the floor. "Oh, you have to be _kidding _me. _Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony _. . . "

"I found it!"

Heinkel's head jerked around. Eddie was running towards her, carrying a grey bundle. Her cassock. She almost collapsed from the relief.

"This is it, right?" Eddie shoved the bundle into her arms. "I mean, it doesn't look like the clothes those creeps were wearing. And there's a phone in the pocket, like you said there'd be."

Heinekl took her cassock. There was her phone, miraculously still in working condition. Her guns, too, though she didn't check to see if they were loaded. Even her knife was there – a simple thing, but it was blessed, just like Anderson's had been, and the short blade had saved her life more times than she could count. She rushed back to Seras' side, hitting the first number on her speed dial as she did so.

Seras was in a heap on the floor. "No mercy," she whispered to herself, as she twitched and fought against the growing shadows. "No mercy, no mercy, no mercy."

Heinkel prayed. The phone connected. She could have shouted. Sometimes, just _sometimes_, things actually did go her way.

"_Heinkel?" _M'Quve's voice. A tone of shock and surprise that Heinkel never thought she'd be glad to hear. _"What is the meaning of this? Where are you?" _

"The Underground," Heinkel replied. "I found Hellsing's leak. And something worse. But, look, I need to speak to Sir Hellsing. Don't ask why, I just need you to make the trip to – "

"_It won't be a trip, Heinkel. I'm with Sir Hellsing at her home, now. Where have you been? Is the vampire there? We sent her to look for you." _

"Seras is here. That's why I need to talk to Sir Hellsing. Look, there's – "

"_Iscariot has been compromised, Heinkel. Our Matthew man was a traitor. I brought the box to Sir Hellsing to try and get help, but – "_

Heinkel's eyes bugged. "The box is at Hellsing manor? You _idiot! _You have to get away from there! There's a monster inside that will – "

"_We know, Heinkel. We are more than capable of dealing with whatever comes out of there, I assure you." _

Heinkel thought back to the drawings Dok had shown her. The tall, thin man with no face. And the arms. So many arms, just like Seras' shadows, but all of them reaching, grabbing. _You can't fight it_, Heinkel wanted to say. _You can't fight it. You'll die and it won't even have to try when it kills you. _

She didn't say that, though, because she had priorities, and Seras was shaking on the ground at her feet. "Is Sir Hellsing there? I need to speak to her immediately."

Sir Hellsing. Integral. The only one who could give the command that would release Seras completely, so the girl wouldn't be warring with herself. So she could have control of herself once more. Her only hope.

"_One moment." _

Heinkel sighed. She didn't trust M'Quve, never had, but the man was smart. He wasn't petty like Maxwell had been. He knew when to shut up and get things done. Explanations could come later. Priorities now."

The phone crackled. _"This is Integral Hellsing speaking. Is Seras with you, Heinkel? What's going on? You wouldn't happen to have found any clues that would explain why there's a dead, burnt cyborg nailed to the wall of my office, would you?" _

"Actually, yes." Heinkel said, almost laughing despite herself. "But look, right now I need you to – "

She was cut off, suddenly, as Seras cried out and convulsed. One of the girl's arms lashed out and knocked the phone from Heinkel's hand. It was a feeble move, an uncontrollable, involuntary act of a sick girl that should have knocked the phone to the ground and nothing more.

With the strength of a vampire behind it, however, it sent the fragile, plastic thing hurtling through the air. Heinkel gasped and fell back, watching as the phone flew against the wall, and smashed there, pieces bouncing away into the shadows.

Seras screamed and beat her head against the ground. She was still delirious, and probably couldn't even tell what was happening around her by this point. But the reaction was appropriate. Heinkel felt like yelling herself.

Eddie looked over. "What's going on?" he asked, helpless. "What just happened?"

"Our last chance," Heinkel said, miserably. And it was – Heinkel thought, desperately, but there was nothing else she could come up with. No last-ditch efforts.

But there had to be.

Heinkel breathed. In. Out. Easy. Ignore the pain. Heinkel had priorities. Priorities were met, no matter what. And Heinkel was Iscariot. Iscariot got the job done, no matter what. No matter what the price. No matter who it hurt.

Heinkel reached into the bundle of her cassock and emerged with the knife. Blessed steel. There was still one thing she could do, she realized. One very stupid, very dangerous thing that probably wouldn't work at all. But she had to try.

Seras lifted her head. She was shivering worse than ever, now, and bloody tears were beginning to puddle on the ground around her face. The world was blurry and everything swam in front of her.

Heinkel was next to her. The woman's boot was on her wrist, and she held a knife to Seras' right hand, the edge of the blade hovering just above the cloth of the white glove there. The sigil burned. The lock, the leash, the Control Art that was driving her insane and making her lose control. Her gaze rolled upward, and she looked at Heinkel.

"Wh'sss . . . what are you . . . what . . . doing?" she managed. The darkness tore at the edges of her mind. Not much time left, now.

"I'm about to set you free," Heinkel replied, with a grimace. She tightened her grip on the knife. "So try to hold still. Because this is probably going to hurt, a _lot_."

Seras shut her eyes. Somewhere, in the distance of her mind, there was a burning, slicing bit of light.

And the rest was lost in darkness.


	10. The Man With No Face

_It was dark where she was, and she was having trouble moving. _

_She wanted to open her eyes and look around but she couldn't. It was like a dream; lead weights were hanging off of her eyelids, pulling her down, cementing her to the ground. Opening her eyes was too much, too much for even her to handle. Too much for her strength. She lay on the ground and didn't move. Her breathing was shallow. It was cold. Somewhere outside, she was moving, she was struggling, but that wasn't her. The violent screaming girl with a boot ground into her wrist wasn't her. It wasn't her whose friend was holding a knife to her hand, bringing it closer, cutting the skin, slicing off the tattoo that held her in check. _

_It wasn't her. But she was stuck inside. _

_There was a noise, behind her. Footsteps getting closer. Something warm came up behind her, knelt down, and put its hand on her shoulder. She could hear the familiar noises; the heavy boots, the rustle of too many layers and too-thick jackets. The feel of the roughened fingers. The thick, permanent smell of cigarettes. _

_(Mignonette. Quel est erroné?_ _Tell me your troubles, please.)_

_She looked up. Or tried to, anyway. _

_(I think I'm dying.) _

_(C'est idiot. You've been dead before and I know it wasn't anything like this. Dites-moi la vérité. S'il vous plait.) _

_She felt comforted by the voice. The thick, ridiculous accent. The facetious tone, even though he was really being serious underneath it. But she was having trouble remembering who the voice belonged to. She knew it had to be somebody important; even in this state his touch both thrilled her and calmed her. But the details were slipping away from her, because so much of her mind was busy screaming, screaming. _

_(I think I'm going mad. The seals, that's what's doing it.) _

_The voice laughed. _

_(No, that can't be it, either. Or at least, not for the reasons you think. Il ne semble aucun raisonnable. Not for you, anyway. I think you're still worried you'll come out like Monsieur Alucard, ha? All teeth and no remorse.) _

_Another name she had trouble placing. The image, though, that she couldn't have forgotten even if she wanted to. It flashed against the dark backs of her eyelids, red and ruthless and terrifying. _

_(I – )_

_The hand on her shoulder tightened. The other one fell to her hair, and stroked it softly. _

_(But you're not like that, all right? You want to save people, not consume them. Comme un ange. Mon ange. He talks about you a lot, you know, whenever he's loud enough that I can hear him. Monsieur Alucard, that is. I think what makes him sad is that you never realized he was proud of your kindness. There's strength in that, you know?) _

_(What? What are you talking ab— )_

_She wasn't able to finish. Just as quickly as they had come, the hands were gone, the voice was gone, the warmth and the smell and the sound were gone, completely. She felt cold again, but even more so now. She could hear footsteps again. Great, heavy, eternal footsteps. And the swish of a coat, muffling the gentle rattle of the buckles and belts beneath it. Cold. _

_A voice. _

_(Wake up, Seras.) _

_And she knew, even though it was so confusing and she couldn't think and she couldn't remember, that it was unusual for this voice to use her name. Was that her name, even? It had to be. But this person shouldn't be speaking it. Or at least, she wasn't used to hearing it like that, so full of urgency and concern. _

_(Wake up.) _

_But it didn't matter. Because the voice was getting fainter. Because the room was getting warmer. Because suddenly the feeling was coming back to her fingers and the feeling was fire, and she was opening her eyes and what she saw was fire. _

_Fire, and a great, white, blinding light. _

_She stood up, and faced the light. Suddenly her mind came back, all of it a great screaming rush, and all of it lined up perfectly. She could think straight, one two three. She could feel, and there was pain, but that didn't matter. It didn't matter because there were bells in her head, bells and a choir that sang: _

_Zero. Zero, zero, zero. Zero! _

_Zero._

_Free._

_

* * *

_

The ground shook.

Captain Gershwin jolted to attention. They'd sent Seras down into the tunnels, into the London Underground, what seemed like ages ago. Now it was almost sundown. The orange dregs of sunlight seeped into the clouds and were diluted there, and the broken glass in the windows of ruined buildings sparkled, faintly.

The ground shook again. A soldier ran up to Gershwin, looking panicked.

Gershwin fixed him with a serious look. "Did that come from underground? Have we heard anything back from Seras?"

"No, sir," the soldier said. He pointed back over his shoulder. "It was – they're coming from the Thames, sir. Must've figured out a way for the water not to hurt them, must have. Oh, God, there's at least a dozen of them, sir. We've got to get our artillery down there _now!_"

"A dozen of what?" Gershwin said.

In response, the ground shook again, and he saw. They were coming, slowly, stomping their way in between the ruined, bombed-out husks of buildings, each one almost as wide as the streets they walked upon. Great, big toothy monstrosities. Claws and scales and bloodshot eyes, still dripping water as they walked. The Thames. So that was where they had been hiding – of course! It was the only place to hide something that big.

They were all the same monster as the night of the storm. The great big stamping thing that Seras had gone and killed, her and that monstrous gun of hers. Only now there were more of them, and Seras wasn't here. But they knew that the beasts could be killed. And they had artillery. And they'd all known, every one of them, that the job was dangerous when they took it.

Captain Gershwin cracked his knuckles and looked down at the soldier. "Rouse the troops, lad," he said. "We're going to fight these things. And we're going to stand our ground. And we're going to turn every last one of their hides to dust."

He looked back up at the distant wave of beasts. What little sunlight was left made it between some of the buildings and shone on one of the monster's shoulders. It screamed, in pain, and shrank back into the shade with a light trail of steam coming off of its burned skin.

Gershwin grimaced.

" . . . And we're going to do it _fast._"

* * *

The air was on fire. And so were the walls, and the floor, and whatever else hadn't gotten out of the way fast enough. Eddie Holloway screamed, fell over, and crawled into a corner formed by some of the ruined crates strewn across the platform. He shut his eyes. Whatever was going on, he didn't want to see it. Didn't wanna, didn't wanna.

But he had to.

The journalist's mind, his greatest weapon and his greatest enemy, was yelling at him once again. _Look around, it said. Look around, Eddie-boy, because what's going on behind you is the story of the century and you're _not_ going to pass it up. _

So he looked.

The flames were dying down almost as quickly as they had sprung up. Eddie squinted, and in the haze and the shine of the bright lamps that still buzzed all around, he could see Heinkel. She was standing up from where she'd been kneeling a moment ago, holding the knife in one hand and a patch of what looked like cloth and skin in the other. Blood ran down her fingertips. He couldn't see Seras – no time to wonder how she and Heinkel knew each other; right now he just wanted to know where she _was_. She'd been there a second ago, screaming, on the ground. And then Heinkel had done _something _with the knife, and then –

Eddie started. Something had twitched, in the corner of his eye. When he turned his head to look, he saw that it was the fire. Only it wasn't fire anymore, it was shadow, red and angular and twisting. And then it was growing, spiraling out into a million interlocking tendrils, curing around each other and spreading out into the air. And at the root of them all, the place where they all came from, was Seras.

The Girl. Exactly as he'd seen her, all those years ago when London was burning and he had been so certain there wouldn't be a tomorrow. Not just her face, but _all _of her: The deep-red uniform that wasn't really red but stained with blood. The too-short skirt, the torn stockings, the badge on her chest, bright and proud and shining in the midst of the horror. The furiously white hair, flecked and matted with blood. She flexed the fingers of her left hand, and they were as long and sharp as claws. She opened her eyes, and they burned with hellfire.

Seras took a step forward, and smiled. "_Oh_," she said. "That feels _so _much better."

Eddie felt like screaming, once again. He made a noise.

Seras noticed him. "Oh, it's you," she said, as though Hellsing's Most Wanted was a casual acquaintance. Eddie shrank further back. She seemed unusual; different from the uptight, suited warrior he'd met in the rain earlier that month. He still couldn't stop staring at her, though; it was the same sort of horrified fascination that came from looking at a tornado, or a storm, or, more appropriately, a raging wildfire. She seemed to take note of his gaze, and looked down at her uniform.

"What, this?" She laughed, and tried, unsuccessfully, to tug her hemline further down her legs. "See, this is some crazy glitch in the Control Art System they never managed to iron out. Releasing to level zero means I have to default back to how I looked when I first became a proper vampire. It's awful, isn't it?"

"Um." Eddie balked. "Yeah. Really terrible."

"Which is another thing," Seras said, abruptly forgetting about the terrified, simpering reporter at her feet. She turned to Heinkel. "How the _hell _did you manage to do _that_, Heinkel? You don't have to authorization to let me go to level zero."

Heinkel held up the bloody patch of skin, and her knife. "No, but I've got _this_. Solid old-fashioned _blessed_ steel, which, as you fancy types are always forgetting, slices through occult magic like bleedin' _butter_."

Seras looked down at her hand. Sure enough, the seal was gone from the back of it. She boggled. "You are _kidding_ me. It couldn't possibly have been that simple."

"It shouldn't have been," Heinkel said, with a grin. "But it seems that Sir Hellsing _somehow _neglected to leave off some of the more important anchoring spells when she gave you yours. Came off like a week-old plaster, it did."

"Ha! I knew she'd find _some _way to stick it to the Twelve."

Heinkel, nodded; then her face turned suddenly serious again. "Look. Seras. This next part's going to be tricky, all right? I need you to get this doofus – " she indicated Eddie " – out of here, and then get back to Hellsing Manor. M'Quve's brought something there, something dangerous, and he doesn't realize what he's dealing with."

Seras cracked her knuckles. "Sounds like an ordinary day for me."

Heinkel winced. "You don't understand. It's – Look, Seras, I'll be honest. This thing, even _I _don't know exactly what it is. It's like nothing you've ever fought before. But they told me about it while I was down here. It's more terrifying than anything you could possibly imagine. I'm not sure if even you could take it on, alone."

"We're not going together?"

Heinkel shook her head. "I've got unfinished business," she said, and pointed down the tunnel where Dok had run off. "You think you can handle alone? Like I said – "

"Oh, I won't be alone, Heinkel," Seras said. "I'll have my _incredibly powerful _army of _ghostly familiars _with me. Isn't that right, Captain?"

More of the shadows shifted. Eddie watched, in fascinated horror, as they bent and shifted and slowly began to take form. A man stepped out from them, wearing a thick coat and carrying a soldier's rifle by his side. He wore an eye patch, and a beaten cowboy hat. His hair, red, was braided, and so long that it wrapped around his shoulders several times before melting back into the shadows and the darkness at the end.

The man produced a ghostly cigarette, and lit it. "I think you give me too much credit, _Mignonette,_" he said. He hefted the gun. "But I'll do my best, eh?"

Heinkel watched the whole spectacle with little emotion. "That _never _stops being creepy, you know that? Now hurry up and go kick that thing's ass, or else I'm never going out to tea with you again. Got it?"

Seras nodded, smirking. Heinkel turned, and ran down the platform. At the end of it, she leapt to the tracks below, and ran into the blackness of the tunnel, vanishing in an instant. Eddie watched her go, and then realized, with a sick feeling, that he was alone with the monster. _Again_.

"Um," Eddie managed to croak. "So what happens now?"

"Now?" Seras reached out for him, with the hand that _wasn't _a swirling, pulsing mass of darkness. "You do your best to hold on tight. Oh, and I think there's still some daylight left, so I might be sort of a little bit on fire. Can you handle that?"

"What? But I . . . "

"I mean, I don't _think_ there's anything else you could do." Seras looked thoughtful for a second, and then snapped her fingers. "Oh, wait, _I _know! I'll be Meat Loaf, and then you can do the guitar solos. Pip will fill in the piano bits. Won't you, sweety?"

The man in the eye patch shot her a concerned look.

Eddie blanched. "You . . . that doesn't make any sense! What are you talking about?"

"Oh, _you _know," Seras said. Her shoulder twitched, and then the shadows were moving, changing. A second passed, and then they'd stretched out and taken form all around her. Wings. She had wings, great and terrible and made of darkness and night. They flapped, experimentally, and a cold wind whirled through the room.

Seras crouched. "Like a _bat _ . . . "

" . . . _hors de l'enfer!_" The man finished. He laughed.

Eddie screamed.

And then, with a horrible rush, they were off.

* * *

Axe met wood with a remarkably satisfying _thwack_.

M'Quve wrenched the weapon out of the box, and then raised it over his head to strike again. The axe felt good in his hands; it was even a proper medieval one, borrowed from one of the many, violent, art displays that could be found all around Hellsing manor. Having tried unsuccessfully to unlock the secret of the box, without damaging it, for so long, he relished the opportunity to vent his frustration on the matter by violently forcing the damned thing open. That, and he wasn't too happy about being duped, either – he'd suspected, hadn't wanted to believe but had suspected nonetheless, that there was something evil inside the box for quite some time. But to have been made an unwitting conspirator in some sort of heathen plot? It sickened him.

Around M'Quve, there was a crowd of Iscariot agents, and Integral Hellsing. All of them had guns, and all of the guns were pointed at the box, ready for whatever monstrosity might emerge from it. M'Quve brought the axe down again.

The intricate carvings cracked, and splintered into pieces, ruined. The circle and its X ruptured and fell into itself. M'Quve raised the axe again, brought it down, raised it, brought it down. _Thwack, thwack, thwack_.

Thud.

He started, as he finally managed to breach the hardwood lid of the box. The Axe fell from his hands, and the box, his obsession, lay open at last. Integral grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him to one side.

"Get back," she said. "We don't know what's in there. We have to be ready for anything, Bishop."

M'Quve, however, brushed her aside and moved back toward the open box. Even now, even knowing what manner of thing it was, his curiosity was too great. It was like an ice-cold hand that had taken hold of his heart, and was pulling him, inexorably, toward his destiny.

"M'Quve . . . "

"_Please_, Sir Hellsing. I can take care of myself. But I have to see, just a little peek." M'Quve placed his hands on the splintered sides of the box, and peered inside. It was dark, in the box.

The darkness looked back.

_Found_

_You_

_M'Quve_

He screamed. Suddenly it all came back to him in a rush, all at once. The night of terror, when the box had spoken to him, clawed its way inside his mind and poisoned him with those words. He'd done his best to forget it, but now it was the same voice. Only it _wasn't _a voice, it was a _thought_, cold and clammy and sharp and not his own. And he was thinking about it all, now. His sickness, that cough that he just couldn't shake. The ruined videotapes, the fear, the paranoia, the icy pallor that followed the box everywhere it went. But it did such a good job of making everybody ignore that, because it was a waiter, a stalker, hunting like a spider.

Now, it was loose. M'Quve's hands were frozen to the sides of the box, stiff, twisted claws. And the thing in the box was rising, rising, emerging from the darkness and revealing itself at last.

Dark.

Black.

Tall.

_Slender_.

M'Quve screamed. All around him, he heard a dull, muffled thunder: the sound of gunfire. But he couldn't hear it, couldn't feel the bullets as they whizzed past and plowed into the monster's sides with no effect. Because he was enraptured. Even in his horror, he couldn't look away from the thing. And it looked back at him. Looked back at him with no eyes. No nose. No mouth. Just a pale, uncaring blank. It looked at him, and the monster had no face.

Dear God, _it had no face_.

In his mind, there was a sound like fury and madness, a distorted scream. M'Quve matched it, crying out in terror, paralyzed. Then, just as suddenly, the moment was broken.

The monster lashed out with one of its long arms, and pain spread across M'Quve's face like a fire. Released, he fell, and crumpled like a doll. Blood poured from his cheek. And then, all around him, the noise of the world went back up, and he could hear it all: gunshots, yelling, terror. He looked up, and saw the beast clearly at last.

It stood in the box up to its knees. How something that tall had managed to fit inside was anybody's guess, but that was probably the least wrong thing about it. It held the shape of a man, but it was too tall, too skinny. Its arms and legs bent in ways it shouldn't, and _it had no face_.

The face was white, but the rest of it was dark. It wore what looked like a black business suit. Crisp lapels, perfectly straight tie. A horrendous, hideous parody of a man. It reached out for one of the Iscariot soldiers desperately shooting at it and placed one enormous, angular hand over the young man's face, smothering him. M'Quve watched, unable to raise himself from the ground, and suddenly realized that the thing was reaching for everyone in the room, all at once. Its arms had multiplied, somehow; there were at least a dozen of them reaching out in every direction, like a great, old, black tree.

M'Quve tasted blood, and realized it was coming from the gash on his face. He touched it, gingerly, with shaking fingers. A cut like that would almost certainly leave a scar, he thought. A great big one, running all the length of his face.

Well. It would certainly make him distinctive.

Then his hand dropped, and the world began to grow quiet once more. Above him, the beast raged, stepping out of the box and reaching, grabbing, smothering everything it could reach. M'Quve's eyes rolled, and he could see Integral, backed up against a wall, sword held out in defiance even as the thing reached out for her with one of its unstoppable hands.

"Go with God," M'Quve muttered. He heard a crash, somewhere in the distance – and looked up, to see the roof torn asunder and an angel descending. An angel with black wings and a halo of fire. She walked on burning gunfire, and the beast with no face turned to her, and the air rumbled with fury. M'Quve closed his eyes, and wondered if this was what it was like to die, or to go mad – or if there was even a difference at all.

Somewhere, somebody was singing.

* * *

_Oh, man. We're so close to the end now that it _hurts_. I'm actually pretty happy with how these past couple chapters turned out, though as always I'm happy to hear anything you've got to say, one way or the other. I'm not sure when I'll be able to finish this, but I do still promise that it's happening, no matter what, and that it'll be less of an insane wait than the last one. We're almost through this, so to whatever small handful of people are still out there, thank you again; we're almost there._


	11. For the Dead Travel Fast

_And lo, there appeared on the horizon a double-sized chapter! Hopefully it isn't too obvious that the Big Fight in this one is basically what I've been waiting the entire story to write. Anyway, have fun with it, and my infinite thanks if you've actually read this far._

_

* * *

_

The sky was on fire.

. . . Well, no, actually, it wasn't. But it certainly felt that way to Eddie, probably because he was being torn through the sky at inhuman speeds by a vampire woman who actually _was _on fire. Slightly. Eddie had his eyes shut as tight as he could manage them, but that didn't help with the terrible feeling of vertigo, or the way his stomach kept plummeting and never landing, or the wind, the awful, screaming wind, that rushed by as they flew.

Seras had him tucked under one arm as she sped overtop the ruined London skyline like a hellish bullet. Her wings, wide and sharp, spread out as far as they could reach and seemed to blot out the sky. And yes, because the sun hadn't quite set, she was on fire, just a bit. Little tongues of flame danced around her neck and her thighs, where the skin was exposed. Eddie had to scrunch up his nose at the smell of dead, burning flesh. They said that people were supposed to smell like pig when they burned, but the smell assaulting Eddie's nostrils was more like hot iron. Seras banked, and her elbow lit up. Eddie yelped, and flailed helplessly, trying to beat out the flame.

Seras, however, didn't seem to mind the fire. Or at least, she had more important things on her mind. Eddie snuck a glance, and saw her staring straight ahead, dead-focused on wherever they were heading. Hell, with _those _eyes, she could probably _see _it already.

Another sharp turn, slicing through the cold evening air, and then London was behind them, the old, half-healed skeleton fading away in the distance. The burning smell increased. Seras flew faster.

As Eddie did his best to hold on and not plummet to a horrible, pancake-y death, some of the shadows filling the sky above him bent, and twisted down to his level. They swirled and congealed for a moment, and then a ghostly head appeared out of the dark, flowing mess. It was the same man as before, the one in the eye patch and the cowboy hat. He grinned at Eddie through a mess of red hair and puffed casually on a spectral cigarette. Eddie whimpered and tried to look away.

The man reached out a large, gloved hand, and rapped Eddie gently on the head, as if checking for an echo.

"'Allo? Is anybody there?" He pinched his nose, giving himself a cartoonish intercom-voice. "This is your captain speaking! We are currently cruising at an altitude of, um." He looked down. " . . . Really damn high, at a speed of, _Je ne sais pas_ . . . really damn fast." He let go of his nose, and then added, lamely, " . . . Kilometers per hour. So what do you think, eh? It's the only way to travel, right?"

"Please," Eddie whimpered, shutting his eyes even tighter. "Please leave me alone."

The man shrugged. "Eh. Whatever. You're no fun, you know that?" But he did what he was asked, oozing casually back into the swirling shadows, and singing quietly to himself as he went: "_I don't know, but I've been told_ . . . "

Eddie shivered. He could feel the wind picking up around him. It was giving him a headache, both from beating against his temples and from the awful, shrieking howl it made against his ears. He tightened his grip.

Suddenly, there was a lurch. Seras was going even faster, Eddie realized, but now she was moving in a decidedly _downward _direction. He managed to squeeze his eyes open just a bit, and saw that they were rocketing toward what looked to be a large manor house, with several helicopters parked in its sizeable backyard. The rest of the grounds were taken up by . . . was that some kind of military outfit? Or were his eyes just playing tricks on him?

No, there was only one thing it could be. Eddie had finally found the heart of his story, though he highly doubted it was worth it anymore. He shut his eyes again.

Now that they were getting closer, something was troubling him. Eddie winced, in pain, as his headache spiked. There was something out there, he realized. Something prying at the corners of his mind, and –

Eddie was unable to finish his thought. Instead, he gasped, the breath knocked right out of his chest, as Seras swerved to a sudden and unexpected halt. Then, she dropped him, and the sudden, heart-wrenching moment of terror was alleviated by the blunt and unexpected feel of grass and sod impacting his face. Eddie opened his eyes. Seras had dropped him on the lawn leading up to the front of the manor. She stood above him, now, shadow-wings folded and drifting lazily in the air above her head. A few bits of her were still on fire, but she was healing fast, and Eddie had never seen her looking more serious than she did now.

"_Stay_," she said, firmly. And then, for emphasis: "Put."

Eddie nodded, dumbly.

"Your part in this mess is done, all right? So just sit here and stay out of the way while I clean it up. But if we have to chase you down again . . . "

She glared. Not even a clenched fist, or a finger drawn meaningfully across her neck. Just a look. Eddie blanched.

"Good!" She smiled. "So long as we're clear on that. Now just stay here and don't muck things up." And then she was off again, tearing up into the air, toward the house. And then . . .

_Well, _Eddie's journalist brain said. _Guess what? Seems as though I've finally found Hellsing at last._

_And, well, you're never going to _believe _how the next part goes _. . . .

* * *

"I don't believe this."

It was one of the younger soldiers who said it, staring dumbfounded into the fiery mess of blood and smoke beyond. "I mean, I just don't. This is too easy. It's not even _funny_."

"You'd better start believing it, lad," Captain Gershwin said. "There's no such thing as too easy, so I suggest you stop looking a gift-monster in the very sharp mouth, and get back to your post."

The soldier saluted, and scampered off. Gershwin turned away, and shouted to the artillery trucks. There was a deafening rumble, and then another shell was let loose, hurtling toward the advancing wall of hulking, reptilian beasts. Like all the others, the shell hit its mark. The monster it had struck screamed, fell into a bloody mess on the ground, and then ignited, turning to dust and ash like any other undead mess. The wind plucked at the dust, and sent it swirling into the air in waves.

There had to be at least a hundred of the monsters out there, stomping in between the buildings of the ruined husk of London. But it was those ruins that were keeping Gershwin and his men alive. With no buildings to block the waning sunlight, the monsters were trapped: a moat of deep orange sunlight separated Gershwin's soldiers from the beasts. Every now and then one would try to venture forward, only to bellow and withdraw as the light burned at their skin.

Not only that, but the things were _slow_, and they had a _lot _of artillery to play with. So far every volley had hit its mark.

Gershwin signaled to the trucks again. "Faster!" he called. "Wipe them all out before sundown! We've only got about a quarter hour left! Otherwise we'll have to face them head-on, and I don't think _any _of you sods wants to tangle with those things!" He was met with another round of artillery reports in response, and another set of screams from the monsters in response. Good.

Another young soldier approached, looking out of breath. Captain Gershwin turned to the young man and nodded, acknowledging him silently.

"It's the men we put up on the roof, sir," he said, gesturing to one of the more intact buildings to the company's far left. "They say they saw something fly out of one of the Underground stations about half a mile to the east, heading toward Hellsing manor."

Gershwin nodded, again. "That'll be Seras," he said. "I'm glad to know she's safe, though God knows why she's running back _there _instead of helping with this mess."

"Do you think we'll be able to get them all in time?"

The cannons roared again. There were more shrieks, and then Captain Gershwin had to squint as the wind sent a wave of dust and ash drifting into his face. He coughed.

"I don't think it'll be a problem, lad."

* * *

A tiny pinpoint of fear plucked at the back of Seras' head as she approached the manor. Something was Wrong, capital-doubleyew Wrong, and it was getting louder by the second. She could sense it easily, now that all the stops were open on her mind. Something was in that building. Something dark and terrible and, well . . . _Wrong_. It didn't feel like anything she'd sensed in her life. But at the same time, it was oddly familiar.

More importantly, there was screaming, and gunshots, and fear radiating from Sir Integra's office like a great red electric cloud. She turned, and sped toward the roof, so fast that the air around her seemed to grow hot.

She hit.

Wood and glass splintered and exploded all around her upon impact. There was no time for the subtle approach; instead Seras simply crashed her way inside in the most direct and forceful way possible. The checkerboard tiles cracked around her feet as she hit the ground, smoking, her shadows curling in behind her.

She looked up, and almost gasped. There was something about being in this state, something about becoming a fiery, vampiric juggernaut that made her almost immune to fear. Something that had let her stare Father Anderson in the eyes, and face down a werewolf without hesitation. But _this_, now . . . the thing that met her in the room was something entirely different.

Seras looked up, and was afraid.

The monster didn't look like a man so much as a vague memory of a man, or perhaps some kind of cheap imitation. It was tall and inhumanly skinny. It wore a black business suit, necktie and all, only the fabric looked slick and leathery, as though it were actually the thing's _skin_. It had a dozen arms, all impossibly long and reaching out, grabbing and gouging, slaughtering the Iscariot agents that swarmed around it and shot at it, uselessly. M'Quve, the oily but not wholly unpleasant Bishop she'd spoken with only that morning, lay in a crumpled, bloody heap at its feet.

_And it had no face._

One of the thing's arms was reaching for Sir Integra. Immediately, Seras rushed across the room and yanked it out of the air. It was freezing cold to the touch and writhed violently beneath her fingers, but Seras kept a tight grip. Shadows spiraled up the leathery sleeve, holding it down.

Integra was clearly shocked by Seras' sudden arrival, but regained her composure almost at once. She lowered the sword that she'd been helplessly brandishing at the thing and gave a quick glance around at the chaos of the room: Iscariot agents thrown willy-nilly, a monstrous girl in a bloody uniform just arrived on the scene, a beast on the horizon, and everything else an utter mess. She sighed.

"Seras," Integra said. Her voice was the same tone of bored calm it always was when she meant business. "You _really _need to stop doing this. It's bad for my heart."

"Sorry, Sir."

"I'll live. By the way, how did you – "

Seras held up her hand, now free of the Control Art's seal. "Long story, sir. But thank you for being sloppy."

Integra smiled, but the moment was short lived. The faceless monster gave a violent yank on its arm, sending Seras flying off balance. She stumbled forward a few steps, and then chanced a look at the thing's face, or lack thereof.

All of its attention was turned on her, now. The attacking Iscariot agents lay on the ground, a mixture of dead and wounded, completely forgotten. There was a soft sucking noise, or perhaps it sounded more like ripping velvet, and then the thing's extra arms were being pulled back into its body, reabsorbed one by one until it only had the regular two. As regular as this thing could be, anyway. It leaned over, bending its unnatural height to bring its pale, blank face close to Seras. She stared back, resolute, even though her legs were trembling and her grip on the thing's arm was loosening.

It spoke.

_Found You _

_Found_

_You wh_

_At what are you_

_S_

_ T_

_ R_

_ A_

_ N_

_ G_

_ E _

_Little wo_

_Man_

Seras winced at the sound of it. No, scratch that, sound wasn't the right word – at the _feel _of it. Not a voice, but a thought, invading her mind uninvited. A bit like how Alucard had sometimes spoken to her, all those years ago, but this time completely without soul. She weathered it, and then lashed out.

Seras almost didn't expect her fist to connect with anything, but then she hit the monster's cheek, and there was a cracking sound, and an _unbelievably _satisfying weight to it. The thing's neck twisted as its head spun back. It tried to look back at her, head tilted and an unnerving angle – and even though it had no face, Seras could still somehow tell that the thing was plainly _shocked _– but then Seras took a step to the side, and heaved with all her might.

In another surprise, she actually managed to lift the monster, which, it turned out, was surprisingly light. It slammed into the floor in a mess of bent, spidery limbs. Almost at once it was up again, lunging for the girl, but then the shadows trailing behind her widened, and Pip was there, aiming his spectral rifle straight at the thing's chest. He fired, again and again and again, unloading a trail of shadowy bullets into the center of the monster's necktie. Unlike Iscariot's bullets, these seemed to give the beast some discomfort, but it certainly didn't slow it down very much.

Seras had expected Pip to be joking when he appeared – that same Frenchman's grin he always had, the same terrible one-liners, the horrible, eye-rolling confidence that came from being immortal _and _getting to live inside a beautiful woman. But instead, he seemed positively _panicked_, almost on the verge of a scream as he fired, endlessly.

"_L'homme mince!_" Pip shouted, over the gunfire. "_L'homme_ _mince, l'homme mince! _Oh, Jesus, Seras, _get the hell out of there!_"

Seras rolled to one side just as the monster lunged. It flew out of the office's door and into the hallway beyond. Seras followed it, punching the thing again and cutting it off from Integra.

"I don't believe it," Seras said, as the beast rounded on her once more. "You actually know what that thing is?"

"I _think _so," Pip replied. "But I swear, I thought it was just a damn _bedtime story_. My _grand-père_, he heard rumors during World War Two. He told them to me as a fairy-tale, ghost stories about a monster who – "

He was cut off as the thing reached out and grabbed for Seras' throat. Clammy, icy-cold fingers clamped around her skin. Pip swore, and shot at its wrist. It drew back, and snarled, actually _snarled _at them like some kind of wild animal.

"Listen, you don't have any idea what you're dealing with!" Pip's voice was almost a shriek, now. "This thing, the stories, it – "

"Save it," Seras said. She crouched, as the thing rose up again and began to run toward them, long arms reaching out and grabbing. "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Captain."

She took a flying leap and tackled the beast. It fell onto its back, and they slid down the length of the hallway. Seras had her hands wrapped around the thing's wrists, now, and her knee in its gut. It was pinned. Her face was barely a hair away from its blank, pale void. The monster considered her, seeing without eyes.

"Gotcha," Seras growled.

_Regards_

_L'homme mince _thought.

And all at once they fell into madness.

* * *

After the blinding, fluorescent shine that was Dok's Tube station-cum-secret laboratory, it was almost impossible for Heinkel to see in the pitch black of the tunnels. She ran as quickly as she could, keeping one hand against the wall and doing her best to avoid tripping over the rusted tracks. She was bleeding out of far too many places, and every inch of her body hurt. But that wasn't important right now. She still had a job, and she still planned on finishing it.

Above her, the ground shook, as if from artillery fire. For a moment Heinkel was shocked, until she realized what must be happening. An army of monsters set free on London . . . but Hellsing had brought their own army this time, and a well-prepared one at that. She allowed herself the timiest bit of relief.

The darkness was so complete all around her that it was another shock to turn a corner and suddenly be confronted with light once more. It was coming from a single, dim, electric lantern, which flickered softly in the shadows.

Next to the lantern, slumped on the ground against a dead end where the tunnel had caved in, was Dok.

He was holding _Herr Teddybär _tightly in one hand, and a Mauser pistol in the other. The hand with the gun trembled. Dok looked up as Heinkel approached. His head twitched violently, and for a moment the tunnel was lit with a showering stream of blue sparks.

"What's the matter, Dok?" Heinkel asked, as she approached. "Did your warranty run out?" She kept the hand holding her knife behind her back. Her grip tightened on it.

Dok looked up. He sighed, and the sound of grinding gears and burning circuits came out with it. "N-not another step closer, _kleiner Krieger_," he muttered. "Any closer und I shoot. Do you haff that? Not. Vun. _Step_. _Ja?_"

Heinkel nodded, slowly. "I understand," she said. This was a standoff, she realized. She and Dok were negotiating, no question about it.

Heinkel _hated _negotiating.

Dok started to say something, but then broke down into pure German. "Not that it matters what you do," he said to himself. "You're just a little brat spoiled on stolen toys. You don't understand anything."

"I understand German," Heinkel answered, in the same language. "If you'd be more comfortable speaking that way."

Dok's shocked expression at that was a victory, and Heinkel savored it. He grimaced, and tightened his grip on the Mauser. For a moment his expression was anger, but then it seemed to turn almost to regret.

"You should have said. It's been so long since I've been able to have a decent conversation in my own language, do you know that?" His head lolled, and his eyes turned down. Sitting like that, he could almost have been pitiable. "None of the other scientists understood me. All of the soldiers were afraid of me. They treated me like God, which, to them, I suppose I was. But, much like God, none of them wanted to look me in the eyes. They ran from me. I obliged them."

Heinkel took a step back, despite herself. Hearing Dok speak like this was unnerving. In his native tongue the words came out crisp, clear, and precise. And, without his accent, there was suddenly an edge to them that hadn't been there before.

Suddenly, Dok just wasn't _funny _anymore. Not that he ever had been before, but _still_ . . .

Dok looked up again. "Even Schrödinger," he continued. "That thing was the closest I ever got to having a son, you know that? He did what I said, but I don't think he really understood any of what was going on. He was too young to understand any of it, least of all what the Major wanted him to do." He shook in a moment of unnervingly quiet rage. For half a second, it almost looked like _smoke _was pouring out of his mouth. "The damn Major. The damn, obsessed, fat little major. Wasting my time and my mind and my children so he could play soldiers."

Heinkel decided that the man's sob story had gone on for long enough. "You're stalling, Dok," she said, calmly.

"Maybe," Dok said. The hint of a smile played at his mouth.

"It's useless, you know," Heinkel said. Suddenly, the ground and the walls shook again. From above ground, there came the distant echo of an explosion.

"There, you hear that? That's Hellsing's army, blowing your precious monsters to smithereens. Your invasion is over before it's even begun."

Dok's smile grew. "You weren't listening to me at _all_, were you, little warrior? The monsters are just plague rats. They're _supposed _to die."

"What?"

"They're undead. Don't you see? They'll be killed, and turned to dust. And then that _dust _will spread on the _wind_, and so my plague will spread. I had hoped for the beasts to be able to disperse somewhat first, but this will still do."

Heinkel faltered. "Oh, God," she muttered. "So it's – "

"Too late?" Dok chuckled. "Well, you don't _know _that, do you? It's like I told you earlier: I've affected an artificial germ for my vampirism plague, which will respond to a radio signal. A signal sent by me, and transmitted by the box my little pet is guarding. But you don't know if the plague is dormant and I haven't activated it yet, or if it's active already and I'm the only one that can turn it off." He spread his arms. "So, you can't kill me."

"We'll see about that," Heinkel said. "And just where do you plan on sending the signal from?"

Dok shook his head. "Still so inobservant, little warrior. Didn't you realize?" In a swift motion, he gripped _Herr Teddybär_'s head in the crook of his elbow and ripped it clean off. Inside the bear's torn seams and rotting stuffing, a small piece of machinery blinked, softly, with a green light.

"It's been right here with me this whole time."

* * *

Seras cried out as she was thrown bodily against the wall. The monster rose up from the floor and took off down the hallway. She realized, watching it go, that the thing didn't really move its feet so much as it seemed to be slipping in and out of perception. It wasn't gliding so much as it was perpetually mid-step. She followed it, running down the hallway after it. When she reached the end, she turned the corner . . .

. . . And found herself running back toward Integra's office. Seras halted in mid-step with a start. There could be no doubt about where she was headed; she could see everyone inside perfectly clearly – but she'd been running _away _from there, hadn't she? This wasn't possible!

Then there was shriek inside of her mind, and thing was lunging at her again leaping out from its hiding place in the corner of her eye. Seras reached up and grappled with the monster. They both slipped, and tumbled back through the door of Integra's office.

. . . Only they weren't falling into the office, they were falling down the front steps of the house's foyer. They rolled, falling over and over one another. Somehow, the insides of Hellsing Manor had simply _stopped working_. Was the monster the one doing this? Seras didn't know how it was possible, but she also couldn't think of what else it could be.

"Pip!" she called out. "Pip, you said you knew about what this thing might be? What the hell am I supposed to be doing to _fight _it?"

Pip appeared at her shoulder. His ghostly face seemed barely an afterthought in the blur of motion as they spun down the stairs.

"I don't know! That's the problem. All my _grand-père _ever said was that he only exists when you're thinking about him."

Seras rolled her eyes. "Oh, _that's _a big help!"

They reached the bottom of the steps. Both sprang to their feet and rushed at each other once more, Seras' shadow's grappling with the monster's long, spindly arms. Seras shifted her weight, and then they were both heaved through another door. This one led to one of the guest rooms on the top floor. From there, they crashed through a wall, which took them to the basement kitchen, and smashed through the floor of that, which landed them crashing amid a pile of dust and rubble into the Round Table meeting room.

Sera stood up, and brushed herself off. "Well," she said," standing on the long meeting table. "Now I've fallen into this room _two _more times than I'd have liked to." She glared at the monster, which was busily righting itself, and crawling up the table toward her. Its head lolled horribly to one side.

_Round and_

_Ro_

_Und_

The monster thought at Seras. She narrowed her eyes. Then, she leaped forward, and punched it again in the face. It reeled, and in that moment of confusion Seras dove for the wall.

She was a rat stuck in a maze, she realized. But she also knew that the easiest way out of a maze was not to play by the rules. Shadows oozed all around her as she passed through the wall.

What she saw on the other side made her scream.

She wasn't all the way to the other room, not quite. She was in the space _between_, that little pocket of _un_ that she always had to travel through to do her walking-through-walls trick. And there was _something_ . . . .

_Something infecting it. Something that had wormed its way inside the walls of the house like a disease, raw and infectious. It traced its way through the dark space and all the lines, all the horrible scars in reality, all lead back to the same thing._

Seras turned. It was right behind her. It had no face.

The monster wrapped its arms around her and then they were falling, falling through the brick and the stone and reality itself. When they landed, they were in one of the manor's endless basement rooms. It smelled wet, and dank, and darkness was everywhere.

For a moment, Seras didn't realize where she was. Then she took a step back and fell into an enormous black chair, the only feature in the entire room. It was made of a cold substance that felt a bit like metal but was probably stone or sanded wood, and the back rose up so high that it was practically a throne.

Alucard's old chair. Seras gripped the armrests like a security blanket.

As she did so, her hand brushed against something she'd forgotten was there. Something she'd found out in the burning skeleton of London ten years ago, and brought back, and left here, _in memoriam: a_ holster, hanging off one of the chair's armrests, and, inside of it, a gun. Seras took a long, steadying breath, and reached for it.

At the far side of the room, the walls seemed to blur, and then the thing was there, moving toward her. It was taller than ever, now, and its extra arms had appeared once more. They reached out, all around it, grasping, searching. The monster glided toward her. As it drew closer, a piercing wail began to fill Seras' head. She clamped her hands over her ears, but that did nothing, because of course the sound was _inside _her head. She threw all of her effort into keeping her eyes up, staring the beast straight in the pallid blank void where its face should have been.

The monster reached out for Seras with its many hands.

_NoWhere left_

_To _

_ R_

_ U_

_N _

_And _

_No_

_Where to h_

_Id_

_E_

It thought at her.

Seras reached into the holster, gripped what she found there, and pointed it at the oncoming monstrosity.

"Eat Casull, you _twat_," she said, and pulled the trigger.

There was a deafening roar, and for one wonderful moment, the monster actually reeled back, was actually _falling_. Then, it righted itself, and reached out again. Seras shrank back into Alucard's chair. She let the Casull drop from her fingers. It landed on the floor with a loud, metallic _thud_.

The thing leaned in toward her. Unlike the other bullets, Seras saw, the Casull's had actually left a mark, a great big messy bullet wound going all the way through the thing's head. But the hole was closing up, now. Seras suddenly found herself transfixed, hypnotized, even, by the swiftly healing wound. All around her, the air was growing thinner, and bony, icy-cold fingers were crawling up her arms and her sides, but she ignored it. All she could see was that little mote of blackness, growing smaller and smaller and giving way to the pale blank.

It didn't have a face. It looked at her.

_Found_

_You_

_Forever_

The hole closed. The world grew dim in front of Seras' eyes. From somewhere far away she could hear Pip shouting for her, and then

* * *

_and then she was gone again, standing somewhere dark and cold and lonely. _Standing_ this time, which was an improvement over before, at least, but she still couldn't see. It wasn't that she was blind – she knew what _that _felt like, and all too well – but more as though a hand were pushed over her eyes and nose. A hand with freezing-cold skin and clammy, sickly flesh. _

_Footsteps sounded in the distance. She panicked, desperately trying to pull whatever was covering her face away, but to no avail. The footsteps drew closer, louder. Boots. The swish of a long coat. She wanted to scream, but couldn't. Footsteps. Louder. Closer. _

_Then, suddenly, a pained shriek – not her own – and she could see again. The hand on her face had been pulled away, and she looked up to see . . . _

_. . . A tall man. A tall man with dark hair. And orange glasses. And a long coat and a wide fedora hat of the deepest red imaginable. _

_She took a step back. Because there was no way. Because it couldn't possibly be. _

_But it was. _

_(Hello, Seras,) said her Master._

_

* * *

_

"So what are you going to do, then, little warrior?" Dok asked. He smiled at Heinkel lopsidedly. "And before you decide, I think you should consider the ramifications of what you're doing. I mean, do you really want to work in the interest of an organization that kept so many secrets from you? In the aide of another organization that hates you?"

"Save it," Heinkel said. She raised her knife.

"_Wait!_" Dok shrieked. "Weren't you _listening?_ You don't know if – "

"No. I don't. But I'm willing to take that chance."

Dok's face fell in an instant. He could see, quite plainly, that Heinkel meant every word he said. "I . . . I thought your church discouraged gambling," he said, desperately.

"They do. But leaps of faith are highly encouraged."

Dok's look of panic turned to one of anger. "But they _damned _you." His gun hand faltered. "They damned you and yet you still – "

"I'm a necessary evil," Heinkel said, cutting him off.

She drew the knife back. "You're not."

* * *

_Seras is her name. Yes. That much she could gather, though she still knew somewhere in the back of her mind that it was unusual for this man to be calling her that. He – Alucard, that was his name, yes – stepped forward and planted one enormous hand on the top of her head. _

_(It's been a long time.)_

_And then it was gone. All of that messy, half-sure dreamtime nonsense simply melted away. Seras knew exactly who she was. Seras knew exactly who _he _was. And then, just like that, she was hugging him, pressing her face up against the ash-gray suit he wore under his coat. A lost little girl finally reunited with the half-mad beast of an old soldier whom she'd – _somehow_ – come to think of like a father. _

_(It can't possibly really be you,) she said. _

_Alucard moved back from her. (It isn't,) he replied. His matter-of-fact tone seemed almost absurd given the circumstances. _

_(What?)_

_(It's not really me. I'm – It's difficult to explain, Seras. My blood has been in your veins ever since you made the decision to follow me into the night. On top of that, you are my lifeline back to this world, just as Wilhelmina Harker was before you. I'm just the anchor for that line. Whatever happened to the real me – I might be dust, I might really be gone for good this time, I don't know – I'm just a shade.)_

_Seras hugged him again, defiantly. (You _feel _real.)_

_Alucard – or should she think of him as the _memory_ of Alucard – took his glasses off and looked at her. (To an extent, I am. I'm a memory. I can't tell you anything you don't know, but I can tell it to you how he – I – might have.)_

_Seras raised an eyebrow. (Tell me about what?)_

_There was another rush, and then it all came back to her. What little color that was left in Seras' face drained from it. _

_(Oh God. I'm, I'm dying right now, aren't I? I can't fight back against that thing. I'm not strong enough!)_

_Alucard snorted._

_(Oh, be quiet,) he said. It was brusque enough to startle Seras out of her panic, and she fell silent. _

_He made a gesture, and suddenly the darkness was populated by a tall, black chair, the same one Seras had been – was – sitting in. Alucard eased into it and looked across at her seriously. _

_(I accepted this power because I was weak and I was a coward. You did, too.)_

_Seras opened her mouth to say something, but Alucard wouldn't let her. _

_(The difference between us is what happened after. I let it consume me, so that I went mad in my greed. You, though – you resisted it. You never, ever, realized the significance of that, did you? One of the darkest and ugliest forces in the world was raging and screaming inside your head, and you told it to be quiet. And then, to pile insult onto insult, you took the power that it gave you and decided – you _chose _which is more than I did – to use it for good.)_

_Seras tried to run to him. But her legs were moving slowly, like in a nightmare, and with every step she took Alucard and his chair seemed to go farther and farther away. _

_(And besides, it's not how strong _you _are that matters in this fight. It's about how strong _it _is. This isn't the ancient monster it's pretending to be, not the _real _one, anyway. It's a cheap Millennium knockoff, and we both know how well _those _hold up, don't we? It's all about perception, Seras. Use what you learned. See around the corners.)_

_(I – )_

_(You're stronger than you'd ever believe, Seras. Make me proud. Go and conquer.)_

_She tried to shout. But the sound only echoed, and then it was gone. And then_

_

* * *

_

and then she opened her eyes. And almost screamed again, because the monster's not-face was right up against her own, and it had its myriad arms wrapped all around her body, encircling her, trapping her. She tried to move, but couldn't. Her body felt numb.

The monster was eating her mind.

She felt this very suddenly and with perfect clarity and certainty. It was eating away at her mind, bit by bit, draining her. And then she realized, just as clearly, that this must be, had to be, what the thing _did_. It drove you mad from fear, and then it ate the slush your mind had become. _He only exists when you're thinking about him_.

But there was something else. Something familiar.

Seras strained, desperately, trying to think of what it was – _(Third eye!) the voice in her head shouted _– and then she had it. She'd sensed a mind like this one before. Felt it thrum through the air the day Alucard himself faded out of the world. Only this was different, because instead of the thing _merging _with her mind it was eating it. But maybe it had to do that.

What was it the Major had said happened to Alucard? It was something to do with that child, the unworldly little boy who looked like a cat. He'd mixed his mind in with her Master's had confused his sense of identity with all the souls Alucard had inside of him, and then

_and then she knew_.

Seras stood up in the chair. It was a tremendous effort, but it brought her level with the monster's blank, featureless face (it _had _no face). "I know what you are," she said, speaking with calculated calm even as she felt a horribly cold force gnawing at the back of her mind. Somewhere, still distant, Pip was calling to her again.

The monster didn't react, only looked back at her with its head tilted in that awful way.

"You eat thoughts, and dreams, and memories. But you made a mistake – you tried to go after mine, and I've got more than one mind to work with. You know what they say about two heads and all."

Still, Pip calling to her. Still, no reaction from the beast.

Seras lifted one of her arms, and it took all the strength in the world. "See, you can deal with mine because you chew it up first, you make it all nice and _digestible_. But what if I were to force feed you something you're not prepared for?"

This provoked something. Slowly, the monster tilted its head to the other side. A few of its arms faltered, momentarily.

Seras bared her teeth. "Because you know what? I just happen to have a spare mind handy. Oh, I won't give you _all _of Mr. Bernadette. I like him too much to do that. But somehow I've got a feeling that if I just give you a few memories he won't miss – Uganda, the lyrics to the Eskimo Song, that sort of thing – it'll do the trick just as well.

All of the arms loosened. The monster was actually trying to _pull away_, now.

"Oh no you don't," Seras nearly shouted. She was angry, now. She reached out her arm and grabbed the thing's head, made the connection. As quickly as she was able, she crammed a select set of Pip's memories into what had to constitute the beast's mouth. It screamed again, inside her head, but Seras weathered it this time.

"Take it!" she yelled to the monster. "Take it and _choke on it!_"

The monster staggered back. It spoke again, that not-a-voice-but-a-thought in her head. And, for a moment, it was just the same as it had been.

_What_

_Did_

_What did_

_You do STRANGE_

_Little – _

But then, suddenly, something else began to creep in. A voice, a thought, with a different texture altogether. Something raw and undigested.

_Woman fo_

_Und me what did_

Oh I

_What did you_

Oh I don't know

_Do_

_To me wha_

_T_

Oh I don't know but I've been told

_Get out please pl_

_Ease_

_GET_

_O_

_U_

_T_

_Of my head no no nonononononono_

ESKIMO!

And then it slipped. Not on its feet, but in and out of reality. It wavered, and shimmered in the air, fading in and out of vision. Something that moved the way that monster did only had a delicate grasp on reality, after all. Moving between spaces like that required an absolutely perfect sense of identity. But now . . . now the thing couldn't decide if it was an incomprehensible thing of pure terror, or a bawdy soldier singing a bawdier song.

It screamed. A real scream this time, though how it could do so without a mouth Seras couldn't tell. Regardless, it was the single most terrible sound she had ever, or _would_ ever, hear in her life.

And then it was gone.

* * *

Several things happened in immediate succession.

* * *

Pip Bernadette, formerly Captain, formerly alive, appeared in front of Seras in all his ghostly majesty and ran a bemused hand across his head. Seras was kneeling on the ground, and panting heavily.

Pip plopped into the huge, black chair. "_What_," he said. "The _hell_. Just happened?"

* * *

The last monster died in a screaming ball of ash and flame. Captain Gershwin's men cheered, and he did, too.

* * *

Heinkel threw her knife. Dok shot his gun.

He missed. She didn't.

The last rotting piece of Millennium crumpled to the ground in a smoking, broken heap.

* * *

Sir Integral Hellsing bent to help Bishop M'Quve, still lying prone on the ground next to the ruined splinters of the box. He was still alive and breathing, she found. She was, by necessity, not entirely sure how to feel about that.

Something in the box caught her eye. It was a surprise – after the monster that had come spilling out, she hardly would have guessed that something _else _could be inside – but she looked anway.

Her eye widened in surprise and her brow furrowed in confusion. "Is that – " she began.

"Is that a _radio transmitter?_"

* * *

The sun went down.

* * *

For not even half of a second, something dark and insidious, hidden in the dust of a hundred slain beasts and now swimming in the lungs of countless hapless humans, took hold. For not even half of a second, a plague flourished.

* * *

Seras Victoria returned to Sir Hellsing's office. And because she was in a hurry, once again, to check on the knight's safety, she took the short way. Which was another way of saying, directly through the floor. She didn't exactly _smash _through the floor, for one thing Integra would be furious, and for another she wasn't in _that _big of a hurry. But once she'd phased through _that_, she didn't pay much attention to what came after.

Seras Victoria, operating on what might have been instinct, or possibly luck, or possibly some last, desperate, subconscious communiqué from Heinkel Wolfe – it didn't really matter which – flew into Integra's office and smashed the remains of the box, along with the radio transmitter hidden inside of it, into smithereens.

The signal that had been sent halted even before it managed to complete itself. The plague died, having never begun in the first place.

And once again, the world was saved.

Seras collapsed against the wall and sat down on the floor heavily. "Your great big bloody creep of a monster has been dealt with," she said to the room. "Your security breach on the lawn, staying put if he knows what's good for him," she said to Integra.

She turned to what few Iscariot agents remained alive and conscious. "And your missing agent is waiting for you at the Tube. Don't keep her there for too long. She kind of needs to get to a hospital, again."

She turned back to Integra. "Now. I don't care _what _is happening tonight. I don't care what's threatening the country. I don't care what high-class memorial dinners we're supposed to be attending. I don't even care that by all rights I ought to be _waking up _right now. I. Am going. To coffin. And I am going to get some _proper_ sleep, _finally._"

Integra smiled, and nodded. "That sounds like a capital idea, Seras. I believe I shall retire to my own quarters as well, our social duties be hanged." She turned to leave, and offered only the briefest of looks to the remaining Iscariot agents.

"Gentlemen," she said. "With the greatest respect – get the _hell _out of my house." She pointed to M'Quve. "And make sure you take _that _with you."

She left.

And they did.

* * *

_Wow. That's . . . pretty much it, actually. There's still an epilogue to come, to tie up the loose ends, which you can expect in a week or two. But that was the climax of the story, so for the three and a half of you still reading this, congratulations, you made it!_

_At this point, I feel I should acknowledge my other influence. That I've drawn from a copyrighted work of fiction called "Hellsing" is, I have always assumed, fairly obvious given where this story is appearing. However, I'm aware that some of you might not be aware what that monster in the box was. I've done my best to write this story so that it doesn't have to read like a crossover – if you don't know what that monster was, then in the context of this story, you're not missing anything and it ought to have been perfectly enjoyable regardless. However, I do feel an explanation is in order, and honor and politeness demand I salute _all _of my sources. _

_The monster – or at least, what the monster appearing here is a clone of – is called the Slender Man. He's a fictional character, yes, but nobody can really claim ownership of Slendy proper, since he's actually the subject of an urban legend, albeit a deliberately manufactured one. This version of Slender Man, like most iterations, is mostly my own interpretation of the character. I have, however, still drawn inspiration from other versions of the character. In particular, the excellent web series "Marble Hornets," from which I have cribbed Slender Man's catchphrases "Regards" and "Found You," his X-in-a-circle "Operator Symbol" calling card, his ability to warp the interior geography of houses, and the tradition of never referring to him directly by name. _

_That I've waited this long to make such acknowledgements was not out of duplicity, but simply to preserve the mystery for as long as possible. Hopefully you've found it effective, at least in part. _

_Anyway, thank you again for having the patience to stick it out with me this long. The epilogue/victory lap is, as I said, forthcoming shortly. Until then, best regards. _


	12. Epilogue

**_Epilogue: _**

**_Dracula's Daughter_**

_

* * *

_

"And so that's pretty much everything."

Seras Victoria was in the basement of Hellsing manor, sitting on the floor, cross-legged, leaning up against the wall. She was wearing a dress, which was atypical for her, but then again, so were social functions. But they were inevitable, because shadow governments loved their parties, and, now that she had one who was well-behaved enough not to try and eat the guests, Integra always insisted on bringing her pet vampire along. Part of this was to terrify the other guests, who tended to vary between annoying and loathsome in Integra's own opinion. Most of it was because Integra's own attendance was both mandatory and dreaded, and she had absolutely no intention of letting Seras ride things out high and dry back at the manor whilst she suffered for her country.

And because neither of the women had been available for the various Walpurgisnacht memorial functions they were expected for and because they had both recently saved the country, again, a party had wormed its way into the second week of May.

So, the dress.

It actually wasn't all that bad really, mostly because Seras had made it herself (a minor pastime in childhood, grown into a full-blown hobby thanks to the time and patience offered by unlife and eternity), and it bore a few marks of her own brand of humor as a result: most of the dress was black, but the cuffs and the collar were checkered with squares of red – subtly hidden Hellsing badges. The sash was tied not at her middle but around her hips, and drooped to one side in a heavy knot; a symbolic holster. And to top it all off, of course, there was the black glove over her left hand, which was sort of like painting a turtle green for camouflage.

On the usually tomboyish Seras, it looked strange. Worn in the dank dungeon that was Hellsing manor's basement, it was downright surreal. Across from Seras, in the middle of the room, was a coffin, black as obsidian, if slightly worse for wear. On top of the coffin was a cube of concrete, cut with care and precision from the ruined ground of Trafalgar Square, and on the concrete was a sigil, written in blood, which had long since gone dry and brown.

Of Alucard the No-Life King, nothing else was left in the world.

No memorial or marker, either – England's greatest bogeyman could never be given a statue, no matter how heroic he'd been at the end – so whenever Seras felt the need to speak to her vampiric father (or at least to _feel_ as though she was speaking to him), this was where she came.

"Yeah," she said, repeating herself in the quiet stillness of the darkened room. "Just about sums it up."

And indeed it did. She'd been talking for what felt like two hours, recounting the events of the previous month in the vain hope that it would come straight in her own head. She came down here often, at least once a month, to ramble on about whatever happened to be on her mind, on the off-chance that some residue of the great man in the red coat might be interested, or even able to help. And he was a captive audience after all; he'd never had this much time for her in the years he was still up and about.

Seras checked her watch. She still had what she guessed was half an hour before Integra would come looking for her and drag her off to _mingle_, which was somehow a much more terrifying word than _maul _or _crush _or _perforate_. Time enough to finish the story, at least. A smile crept over her face in spite of herself.

"Okay," she said, to the empty coffin. "So after we had a couple days of downtime, meaning alternating between sleeping and sitting in front of the telly to see how much of our mess got onto the news, Integra called a meeting of the round table. I think if you got to pick one part of this to have been there for, this would've been it. I mean, I've never _seen _her so angry . . . "

* * *

Only Seras can't actually see it, because she's not in the room. She can hear it all perfectly well, though, and she can only guess what it looks like to the young and quivering new members of the round table. The conference room still hasn't been fully repaired from Seras' fight with the beast, and so the aging, one-eyed knight appears before the court amidst ruin and rubble to rage at the young men stretching all the way down the sleek table.

Seras doesn't feel bad about eavesdropping, because it's her Integra is yelling about. Specifically, about how she – or rather, _my most powerful assest, the most powerful thing standing between this island and oblivion, and not to mention one of my closest friends, are you bloody well listening to me _– almost went mad and almost wasn't able to fight as a result of the Control Art process they demanded she enact. They argue, in return, that it was just a precaution, and a prudent one at that.

Integra tells them that Seras Victoria is the last person who needs _precautions_, because she wouldn't hurt a fly, unless it was undead, in which case she'd blow t out of the air with a semi-automatic cannon. _And you'd better count yourselves lucky she doesn't do the same to you, you spineless sacks of drivel, since it's what you bloody well deserve because _. . .

Seras has to bite her tongue to keep herself from snickering, three floors down, in the kitchen, where she passes the time by making herself blood-spiked Pimm's Cups. Yes, it's been slow ever since Walpurgis Night, but she's all right with that. It means whatever beasties _are _out there are too afraid to peek out of their holes, and that means she's been doing her job right. Cheers and carry on, wot.

Eventually, Integra calms down and appeals to the Round Table's purses, which is the one argument they cannot turn deaf ears to. Hellsing, after all, comprises the largest part of their budget. And wouldn't it be nice, Integra says, her voice growing silky-smooth, if they could shave a few pounds off of that? Say, by eliminating the prohibitively large numbers of guards who patrol Hellsing headquarters, by replacing them with _one_ ghostly Frenchman whose shadow stretches long and far, and works for _free_ on top of it all.

But to do _that_, of course, dear miss Victoria would have to be at level zero at _all _times, meaning no more Control Art leash for you, gentlemen.

Which leaves them with a dilemma.

Fortunately, thanks to their own thrifty habits and Integra's steely, impatient gaze, they are not left with much of a _choice_.

* * *

Seras laughed. "It actually _works_, too, you know. Pip covers the entire manor, now. I mean, he can't actually _see _everything in it, which, is probably a good thing when you think about it, but he can still tell when something's not right. So far he's mainly just been annoying the visitors, especially the Iscariot ones. You'd have approved of that, too, I think."

She leaned further back and glanced at her right hand. No glove, seal, or even a scar marked it, now.

"And, of course, I don't have to deal with this anymore. I wonder what it was like for you. Is it what drove you mad, or did it keep you sane?"

No response from the coffin. Not that she'd been expecting any.

"Anyway." Seras glanced away. "As I was saying, Visits from Iscariot. Which have actually been pretty civil, though Integra likes to keep them waiting around forever while she practices fencing."

But it wasn't the visits _from _the Vatican that Seras had her mind on now, but rather one of her visits _to _them. Or, more specifically, one of her visits to the English hospital that they send their wounded agents to . . .

* * *

It's a sunny afternoon, which serves the double purpose of ruining the serious tone of the occasion and putting Seras in a foul mood. Heinkel Wolfe enjoys both of these facts. Seras is slouched in an uncomfortable plastic chair at the far end of the room, her posture less out of disrespect and more an effort to avoid the sunlight streaming in through the wide windows. At least, Heinkel thinks, they are met on more amiable terms than the last time they were both in a hospital room and she was halfway dead.

Heinkel herself is not as bad as last time, though. This time she's got both her arms and legs, and even though she looks a mess and bandages are covering most of her exposed skin, she's still sitting up comfortably. In her lap is an old, beat-up, slightly singed copy of _The Fox and the Hound_, which she had been busy re-reading until Seras arrived, stepping through the wall and looking desperately left and right to make sure there were no other Iscariot representatives in the room.

Now she sits, and considers Heinkel with a wondering stare.

"You're really going to do it again? You spent ten years in the cold, barely able to feel _anything_, and now that you've finally got sensation back you're just going to let them give you the regenerator operation _again_?"

Heinkel shrugs. "I have to."

"You've got a choice, you know."

"So did you. And if I could undo that – snap my fingers and make you completely human again. Would you do it?"

Seras is deeply shocked by that. "Of _course _I would," she says, sounding offended. "Of course!"

Heinkel nods, grimly. "Yes, you would. And for a few days, or weeks, or months, or even years you'd be glad that you did. But then something else would start to creep in. Food wouldn't taste right. Your eyes would feel like they were overflowing with cataracts, even though the doctors say they look fine. You'd feel wrong sleeping at night. More than that – you'd lie awake, feeling like there was something terribly important you were meant to be doing that you weren't. Only you can't put your finger on just what it is

"But even worse then that – every time you read in the paper about a murder, or heard a cry for help in the street at night, and knew there was something more to the situation then there seemed. You'd feel the guilt, because that would be something that _you _could have prevented, but can't now, because you aren't strong enough."

Heinkel runs a dismayed hand through her hair, and Seras realizes with a start that the woman is crying.

"Don't you get it? That's the real hell of it, the curse. We're the damned, Seras, but nobody else is strong enough to protect the innocent. Sometimes, good simply can't be accomplished without evil in its service. Judas Iscariot knew that. Section Thirteen knows that."

She reaches out a hand. Seras crosses the room, unmindful of the rays of sun that burn and smolder across her skin, to take it. The fingers are rough, and strong, but trembling.

"_I _know that. Do you understand, Seras?"

And Seras nods. She does understand.

God damn it all to hell, but she does.

* * *

"That's something I had to _learn_, too," Seras said. She was concentrating on her hands, eyes down. "I wonder if you never really explained that to me because you wanted me to figure it out for myself, or if because, well, you were still wrapping your mind around it as well."

She stretched, and checked her watch. "All right," she said, finally looking back up at the coffin and the little slab of concrete on top of it. "I've only got a few minutes left. But this is the last bit, and it's probably one of the parts you're wondering about the most . . . "

* * *

It's night in the house of Hellsing. The sun has just gone down, and Seras Victoria has just come up to stalk the night – no mean feat when clothed in pajamas and bunny slippers.

The hem of her robe beats about her ankles lightly as she wanders down the darkened hallways. A cold bag of transfusion blood – breakfast – peeks out of her pocket. The house is almost completely silent. Almost. There are voices coming from upstairs, one calm and collected and doing its best not to sound too irritated, and the other the sound of someone trying to wrap their heads around something and failing at it. Loudly.

She'd been planning to take breakfast in the library, then get dressed proper and spend the rest of the night with a book. But there's no way she's going to miss the scene taking place several floors up, so, hands in pockets and hair still a mess, Seras steps onto the wall, and up, and strolls through the ceiling with a gentle little _wfff. _

The voices get louder as she goes, and then she steps into Sir Integra's office, rising up through the chessboard tile and leaning against a wall. Integra acknowledges the girl's arrival with a polite, subtle nod; the man sitting opposite her does so with a yelp.

The man is Eddie Holloway, of course, and if the bags beneath his eyes get any deeper they're going to sink right through. His fear doesn't last long; once he sees who it is, he settles down and turns back to Integra, pushing his glasses back up his nose as he does so. He's got a bit of a nervous shiver that seems to have worsened, now.

"As I was _saying_, Mister Holloway." Integra adjusts her own spectacles and leans back in her chair. "It's all true, every word of it, except for the bit about the Count turning to dust at the end. Stoker was asked to edit that part, which he did gladly. Made it more dramatic, he said. I'm told the bit with the castle exploding was his idea."

"But . . . _but _. . . " Eddie's head is in his hands. "It was a _story! _A novel! It, it's all just made up stuff! You can't be telling me . . . "

Integra sighs impatiently. "As I've _said_, Mister Holloway. Mister Stoker was a friend of the family, and published our records as fiction with Abraham's permission. It's the easiest way to hide the truth, after all, as you seem to be so adept at illustrating."

Eddie slumps forward. "This is a joke."

Integra produces a cigarillo and lights it. She breathes in deeply. "I assure you it is not, Mister Holloway. I even have the original copy in the basement, if you want to look at it."

"Original? Like, you mean, the, the _manuscript_, or . . . ?"

She exhales. Smoke curls around her face. "By which I mean several boxes containing an assortment of journals, letters, telegrams, personal papers, newspaper clippings, and one phonograph record, all pertaining to the events surrounding a certain monster who came to our borders in the last few years of the nineteenth century. I'm sure a journalist like yourself would be fascinated by it."

Eddie slumps back. "But the name is different. It's not even the same name."

"Well of course it isn't," Integra says. "My family changed its name from _Van Helsing_ to _Hellsing_ when the first World War began. To sound less Germanic, you understand." Another puff of smoke. "Hardly unprecedented. Prince Albert did the exact same thing."

This is followed by a large pause. Seras, mostly bored by the conversation, pulls the blood bag out of her pocket and nibbles idly on the stopper. She considers wandering off, but it's not really as though there's anything better to do.

"Okay," Eddie says, finally. He looks up, slowly. "Assuming I believe everything you're telling me – _why _are you telling me? I thought I wasn't supposed to know _any _of this."

"You're not," Integra replies. "But seeing as how you've gone and ruined that option quite thoroughly, we're forced to examine things from another perspective. You've proven yourself a threat, Mister Holloway, which means that even if we release you, we'd have to keep you under constant surveillance. Which is expensive. And complicated. Just killing you would be easier, not to mention cheaper – "

Eddie turns green.

" – But unfortunately, I do not believe Seras would approve of that, and I happen to respect her opinion."

Eddie glances around, toward Seras. She waves, lightly, and he slouches down even farther.

Integra continues, undeterred. "Which leaves me with a third option. All of your other faults – multitude that there are – aside, you are, to date, the only person to have breached our information security and gotten away with it. Which means, were the situation to arise, you would likely be able to _prevent _the same thing."

Eddie pales even further. "Oh. Oh, God, you're – "

"I'm offering you a job, Mister Holloway, and so long as the Round Table stipulates that Hellsing is to remain a secret organization, it's an important one. Not that you have a lot of options at the moment."

"You, you want _me _to fight _monsters?_" Eddie says, weakly.

"Certainly not. That's Seras' job."

"It involves bullets," Seras calls from the back of the room, in a bored tone. "You might want to keep a few handy anyway, just in case."

"So, so . . . " Eddie falters. "You just want me to – "

"To run interference on anyone sticking their noses in too far, exactly." Integra finishes. She reaches into a drawer on her desk and pulls out what appears to be an annotated map. She hands it to Eddie.

"You can start by keeping people away from this particular bit of the Forest of Avon. We happen to have found something of interest there, and I don't want anybody else getting involved with it."

"Found? Found what?"

Integra leans back. "Well, you know the old adage about hiding a tree in a forest. Only even that doesn't work forever, provided you've got enough time and disposable income and people willing to search."

Eddie face is a portrait of confusion. "You've found a . . . tree."

"Technically speaking. Actually, it's a prison cell – and it's the occupant we're interested in." Integra drags deeply on her cigar, and the blazing embers light up her face. She leans forward, smoke billowing out from her mouth like a dragon, and grins.

"I am certain, Mister Holloway, that you are at least somewhat familiar with the name _Merlyn_."

* * *

"And that – that really _is _the end of it, for now anyway."

Seras stood up, and stretched. The shadows settled around her feet. She looked down at the empty coffin and the sigil atop it as she turned to leave.

"Anyway, thanks for listening. I – I know you were never all that interested in anything I did when you were still around, but I hope I turned out to be something you'd be at least a little proud of. One way or another." She took a step, stopped, and turned back again.

"And you know what? I don't know if you can hear anything I say when I come down here. But I _know _you're coming back, someday. Sir Integra doesn't believe me but I know it, just the same as I know my own name. And I don't know if it takes you another ten years, or twenty, or however long – when you get back, you are going to be _bloody well grateful _for my letting you piggyback in my blood all that time. And I don't care if you want to hear it or not, but I am going to sit you down and tell you everything that you missed out on by being bloody _non-existent_." She huffed. "And you will _like _it."

She turned to go, and this time she didn't look back. "After all, you're _far _too long overdue to be spending some quality time with your dau—with me."

And then Seras stepped through the wall, easy as could be, and went on to the world above. To Sir Integra.

To the night.

* * *

_Somewhere. _

_Somewhere he (it?) is falling, he the monster, he the beast. He the thing sometimes called Schlanker Mann, sometimes Homme Mince, sometimes something else altogether. He is falling because the strange nasty woman cursed him. He is falling because her mind was not like the others. He is falling because he failed, and where once he was something unknowable and terrifying, now he is simply a tall, skinny man with no face, in a suit, tumbling head over heels toward and unknown blank._

_He is falling, falling through the nothing and the space in between of nothing, because he cannot grasp, not quite firmly enough, just who he is. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the infernal song goes on, and on, and on, just loud enough to keep him plummeting into nothingness and oblivion. _

_It's a long fall, but not without an end. He can feel it coming, a great white void of pure, unadulterated nothing, where he will be trapped forever and ever. Enough time, perhaps, to get that infernal song out of his head. _

_But something stops him. _

_Just before he can complete his descent, something reaches out, and grabs hold. Something yanks him violently sideways, yelling and screaming. For a moment every fiber of his being feels as though it is being ripped apart and put back together, and then he _has_ landed, really and truly. He looks up, to see where he has been brought. _

_It is still nothing. _

_But it is a crowded nothing. Lost, wandering souls of the dead fill it up from edge to edge, moving back and forth, swaying and moaning horribly. Not all of them move, a great many are still, killed and destroyed so that they may never walk again, not even as ghosts. Almost a third of them are this way, piled on the ground in a mountain of rotting skeletons and corpses. Atop this mound of death there is a chair, cool and black as night. Beside the chair there is a young boy in a military uniform. Cat ears sprout from his head. He sports a sour expression, and looks incredibly, inescapably bored. _

_In the chair there is a man. A dark man, with wild black hair, and a long, red coat. _

_Der schlanke Mann – the Slender Man, rather – hauls himself to his feet, and looks at this man. And for the very first time in his existence, he is absolutely, completely terrified. _

_(Sorry to catch you so roughly) the horrible crimson-red man says. (I'm out of practice.)_

_The voice rings inside the Slender Man's head and fills it up, an awful ringing sound. He tries to shout and drown it out, but he cannot. _

_The dark man continues. (I'm very busy here, as you can see, but I thought I'd take some time out for you. I am going to kill you, of course – I have to if I'm ever going to get out of this infernal place, just like I have to kill the rest of the lives inside of me – but I want to hear you speak, first.) _

_The Slender Man is beating at the sides of his head. He is in agony; he wants to know why, why, WHY. _

_(Because it's awfully hard to find out about the world outside from this place. And I'm actually somewhat interested in knowing how my family is doing. I understand you recently met my little girl.) A sardonic smirk. (I'd like to know how she's getting along. And if it's not too much trouble – be as detailed as you can when you get to the part about how she crushed you like an insect.) The smirk becomes a smile. (I'm especially keen on that part.) _

_The Slender Man screams. The dark man, the bloody man in his crimson coat, laughs. His smile widens even farther, and he's grinning, grinning a proud and razor-sharp smile. _

_(Go on – Tell me _all _about it.)_

_

* * *

_

And somewhere else – somewhere far away yet so awfully close – Seras Victoria is actually beginning to enjoy her night. For this is Walpurgis Night, two weeks late perhaps, but a proper Walpurgisnacht if ever there was one regardless.

Walpurgisnacht, when the dead hold sway and all the beasts might freely roam beneath the starry sky. Seras walks the floor of a crowded ballroom. Sir Integra isn't far off, but it's not realy of any consequence, not right now, not while she's in the moment. Seras lets the crowd wash around her, and she glides through it all, serene.

This is _her _night.

And she dances.

** THE END **


End file.
